Easy Job 

 

Sometimes you find a problem that others have over looked for a while. This gives you that “Feeling The Feeling” like a hero and that “Natural High” as the problem is solved almost instantaneously. Here’s the story.

 

 

 

Easy Job

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Along about 1990, I was working in the Process Section of Phillips Petroleum’s Corporate Engineering in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. My boss called me in and told me to pack my bags that I was being assigned to help start up a small natural gas processing plant in Wyoming. It was the summertime so the weather was very nice in Wyoming this time of year. They had been trying to start the plant for a couple of weeks and had not been able to get the feed compressors to pump more that half the gas necessary to load the plant.

 

 

I never dreamed this job would be starting up a gas plant in the prestine Wasatch National Forest in Wyoming.

 

 

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I didn’t know what to expect, but I was told the plant was in the edge of the Wasatch National Forest in Wyoming. I flew up to Salt Lake City , Utah, and drove over the Wasatch Mountains into Wyoming and got a motel room in some small little town. On the way out to the gas plant I saw hundreds of pronghorn antelope along side the road. When I got into the forest, a huge bull moose came running across the road right in front of me. I was astounded to see a moose in Wyoming. I drove on to the gas plant. The plant was sitting right next to one of the finest trout streams I have ever seen with that crystal clear cold water. I had not even thought about bringing my fishing gear.

 

 

I was was very  surprised to see a big bull moose cross the road ahead of me in Wyoming.

 

 

 

When I went into the plant office, it was like old home week as the lead E&P engineer was a guy I had gone to work with in my early years in Borger, the E&P liaison engineer was a guy that had worked for me in Oklahoma, City, and the Plant Supervisor was a lead operator from Rock Creek Plant in Borger that I had worked with for years. We huddled and talked about the problem and I went out to look around. The first thing I checked was the by pass that recycles gas from the discharge to the suction of the compressors to keep them loaded during start up. The valve showed to be closed as it should have been. I read the tag on the valve operator and it said requires 6 to 30 psi to operate the valve. I looked at the signal to the operator and it was only 3 to15 psi so the valve was only half closed. I had them change the operator to a 6 to 30 psi signal and the valve closed all the way off. With the recycle out, the compressors doubled the feed gas to the plant and it ran like a top.

 

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I was pleasantly surprised to see a trout stream running free right next to the gas plant we were starting up.

 

 

 

I stayed a couple of extra days just to enjoy the area. I wondered if I should have delayed reporting the recycle problem a while to allow a few more days in this beautiful country, but no good engineer can delay solving the problem as soon as possible.

 

 

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Thanks for reading Easy Job,
Bill