Pipelining & processing

All natural gas production in Canada is connected to processing facilities and eventually to markets by buried pipelines. Some crude oil production is trucked to the nearest processing facility (called a battery) or pipeline terminal. Pipelines serving wells and facilities in the upstream petroleum industry are referred to as flowlines or gathering systems.

Oil and gas companies operate more than 200,000 kilometres of flowlines and gathering systems in the producing areas of western Canada. These are relatively small pipelines-2 to 24 inches, or 50 to 600 millimetres, in diameter. About 60 per cent of the gathering lines in Alberta carry natural gas and natural gas liquids. Processing facilities separate the raw petroleum into marketable commodities and by-products. If the oil or gas contains sulphur compounds, it is termed "sour" and requires special equipment and procedures. Sulphur compounds are highly corrosive, so regular maintenance and inspection of pipelines are particularly important. There are about 6,000 kilometres of pipelines in Alberta carrying sour gas from about 2,000 producing sour gas wells.

At gas processing plants, sulphur compounds and liquids are removed from natural gas through chemical and physical processes involving heat, cooling and catalysts. Plants handling large volumes of sour gas include sulphur recovery facilities to produce elemental sulphur for sale to the fertilizer manufacturers and other industries.

Of the nearly 300 gas processing plants in Alberta, more than 60 are large facilities that produce elemental sulphur as a byproduct. The British Columbia sour gas industry includes three large sulphur recovery plants, four smaller field plants and more than 4,600 kilometres of sour gas pipelines.

Found and produced along with crude oil are varying quantities of natural gas, known as associated gas or solution gas. This gas may be directed to processing plants or flared if quantities are too small to justify recovery. In the 1990s, there was a sharp reduction in the proportion of solution gas that is flared. This has been done to conserve economically valuable product and to reduce air emissions.