re: Natural gas producers in TX paying people to take supply as prices sink deeper negative

quote:

---

the dirty side of this is the production is more and more sour and the costs of treating H2S is becoming more expensive

---

Seriously, by sour do you mean above 0.5% or say like heavy crudes at 3.5% sulfur? The biggest cost is due much of it is very light 56-60 API gravity which causes the main crude column to be flooded with light ends and reduces its capacity by around 30% or more. From a friend who is installing paraffin wax removal units in mostly Eagle Ford, his design. They are getting more than $40 at the wellhead due paraffin wax content. Another issue is that European refineries aren't used to iron content which poisons hydrotreater catalysts. and from the same well pad in the same formation, some wells have iron contamination and other don't.

Bakken is rather gassy as well which causes issues with transportation. Conoco in Lake Charles had this issue when it switched from importing Libyan due sanctions to importing Brent in the early 1980's Tanker took twice as long because the ship's cargo pumps would get vapor locked if pumping at full capacity.