Re: Sulfur, oil and gas by-product information webpage
Posted: Mon 15 May 2017, 09:32:54
The sulphur story in Western Canada is an interesting case of supply and demand. I remember somewhere back in the eighties where we were purposefully looking for high sulphur natural gas due to what was perceived as a world shortage of sulphur mainly used in fertilizer. Certain parts of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin have very high sulphur content in Devonian through Mississippian carbonate reservoirs. Caroline the field that Shell discovered and Rockman mentioned has H2S content as high as 30% if my memory serves. There were a few discoveries in the foothills (eg. Panther River) with extremely high H2S content (up to 70%) and there are anecdotal accounts of solid pieces of sulphur coming up the drill pipe during testing. Needless to say the oil and gas companies were quite successful in finding large amounts of sulphur rich gas and then sulphur prices collapsed due to over supply. I remember flying over various gas plants in the Foothills area back then and being amazed at the size of the sulphur blocks being built (basically the high sulphur gas once found keeps producing and you need to do something with the sulphur). Getting the sulphur to market back then was done exclusively by rail and it wouldn't be unusual to watch a very, very long train pass by with nothing but cars filled with sulphur. Piping it certainly makes sense but given similar experience with waxy crudes where a dual pipe system was employed to heat the oil I wonder at the high maintenance required and the risk for failure.