Oil & Gas

Duties Across the Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream Chain

SorbiTech covers the recurring adsorption and separation duties of oil and gas across the full value chain. The SorbiTech adsorbents, the SorbiTech systems, and the SorbiTech EPC delivery together serve wellhead to sales gas and through to refinery boundary, with one accountable partner for media, equipment, and project execution.

Upstream: Wellhead to Sales Gas

Wellhead gas is saturated with water, carries variable hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide, and arrives at the inlet separator at high pressure. Recurring duties from the wellhead through to the sales meter include:

• Gas dehydration to pipeline or cryogenic specification, see natural gas dehydration
• Hydrocarbon dew point control on rich gas to prevent condensate in the pipeline
• Mercaptan and hydrogen sulphide removal with SorbiTech 13X molecular sieve
• Produced water treatment to reinjection or overboard limits, see produced water treatment
• On site nitrogen for blanketing, purging, and pipeline inerting

Midstream and Downstream: Processing, Storage, and Effluent

Midstream and downstream operations add the duties of NGL recovery, gas storage, and refinery integration:

• Cryogenic feed preparation for NGL extraction and LNG plants
• Drying of recycle hydrogen and process streams ahead of catalytic units
• Activated carbon for vapour recovery on storage and loading
• Refinery effluent polishing to discharge limits

Built for Sour, High Pressure Service

Streams combine high pressure, variable composition, water, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon dioxide, with continuous duty reliability. SorbiTech builds equipment to ASME VIII for the pressure shell, to NACE MR0175 and ISO 15156 for hardness control in sour service, to ATEX or IECEx for hazardous area certification, and to PED for European projects. Third party inspection and full material traceability are standard.

For hazardous area duty SorbiTech delivers heater enclosures, motor starters, instruments, and analyser shelters in the matching zone classification, with documented certificates per item and a single project register that the operator hands over to the inspection authority.

Regional Operating Environments

The sector operates across three distinct regional contexts. The Middle East upstream environment combines high ambient temperature, dust loading, and Aramco SAES compliance. The North Sea offshore environment enforces strict zone compliance, helideck and weight limits, and OSPAR discharge consents. The North American midstream environment runs to API and ASME with state level air emission permits that drive vapour recovery duty.

SorbiTech maintains the engineering deliverables and the field service capability for each regional context, with country specific QA documentation and language localisation where the project requires it.

Sustainability, Flaring Reduction, and Methane Capture

The sector is committed to lower carbon intensity production, and three SorbiTech contributions matter directly. Methane capture from associated gas reduces the volume routed to flare. Lower regeneration gas consumption on a TSA unit cuts the parasitic methane and CO₂ load. Vapour recovery on tank storage and loading reduces hydrocarbon emissions by 90 to 98 percent compared with passive venting.

The cumulative effect across a typical upstream gas field is a reduction of 20 to 60 thousand tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year for a medium scale operator, which is now reported under the operator emissions disclosure obligations.

Reference Specifications and Project Engineering

Project delivery follows the published reference specifications used across the sector: Shell DEP for engineering and material practice, Saudi Aramco SAES for the Middle East upstream and downstream, and the company specific equivalents that operators issue for their own assets. SorbiTech engineers maintain a working library of these documents and align the project deliverables, the data sheets, and the inspection plan to the operator standard from the first concept review.

Drawing packages are issued in MicroStation or AutoCAD to the operator preference; data sheets follow the API formats for separators, dryers, and heat exchangers; and document management is handled in SmartPlant Foundation or Aconex for projects that require it.

Asset Integrity and Turnaround Support

For brown field projects the existing asset integrity programme drives the package design. SorbiTech aligns the inspection windows, the risk based inspection class, and the planned turnaround intervals to the rest of the unit, so the package does not become the bottleneck. During planned turnaround, the SorbiTech service team carries out media changeouts, vessel internal inspections, valve overhauls, and instrument calibration in the same window as the host unit shutdown. A typical campaign runs 5 to 14 days and is delivered with a full pre and post inspection documentation package.

Operations and Maintenance Service Contracts

Sustaining performance over a 20 to 30 year asset life requires a service contract covering planned media changeouts, condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, and rapid response on breakdown. SorbiTech offers three contract levels: spare parts and media supply only, scheduled maintenance with quarterly site visits, and full operations support with embedded technicians.

For remote upstream sites the full operations contract includes telemetry on unit performance, an alert routed to the SorbiTech regional centre when a parameter drifts outside the alarm band, and a mobilised field response within 48 hours for the higher service classes.

One Accountable Partner

The SorbiTech media, the SorbiTech systems, and the SorbiTech EPC delivery sit inside one SorbiTech Group. A single performance guarantee covers the complete system from inlet flange to outlet specification, which removes the gap between media supplier and equipment supplier that drives the majority of post commissioning disputes in this sector. Operations and maintenance contracts at three service levels cover spare parts supply, scheduled maintenance with site visits, and full operations support with embedded technicians. Recurring duties served by SorbiTech in this sector include natural gas dehydration, produced water treatment, the twin tower TSA package, the CPI separator, and the full molecular sieve family.