The Enterprise family of companies is one of North
America’s largest midstream energy networks, providing services to producers and consumers of natural gas, natural gas liquids (NGLs), crude oil, refined products, liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) and petrochemicals.
The assets of the combined entities include more
than 48,000 miles of onshore and offshore pipelines that transport and gather natural gas, NGLs, crude oil, petrochemicals, LPGs and refined products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Enterprise offers 200 million barrels of NGL storage, 27 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage, 14 million barrels of crude oil storage, 27 million barrels of refined products and LPG storage, The meters do not have to be custody quality but need 28 natural gas processing and treating facilities, 17 to be highly accurate. Shutting down the pipeline NGL & propylene fractionation facilities, and 19 refined to install leak detection metering is not an option. products terminals. The measurements must be “normalized” for standard volume. This usually requires the use of a flow computer Enterprise Products Pipeline provides transportation (such as an Omni) as well as temperature and pressure services to customers on a fee basis; therefore, the (or density) inputs. As a result, inline meter installations gross operating margin is directly dependent upon tend to be very costly as well as disruptive to pipeline the volume of product transported. The Enterprise operations. application story starts over 3 years ago when Enterprise approached FLEXIM looking for a solution to “Leak Solution Detection” which is required throughout their pipeline The FLEXIM “HPI” meter offers the perfect solution to system by Federal regulations. this problem. It allows the measurement to be made non-invasively eliminating any disruption in pipeline Challenge operations. The “HPI” meter eliminates the need for a Enterprise must have a means for monitoring the separate external flow computer as the “HPI” meter flow of critical segments on their pipeline between comes pre-configured with industry standard tables facilities. This monitoring is typically in addition to (GPA TP-25, ASTM 1250 and 4311) which together with their custody metering, and many segments where the temperature and pressure inputs will do the standard monitoring is needed there is no custody metering. volume compensation internally. The FLEXIM solution is cost effective and non-disruptive to pipeline operations. The initial installation was so successful, over the last 3 years Enterprise has put nearly 200 FLEXIM meters in service throughout its pipeline system.