Keyera’s Wapiti gas plant hit by unplanned outage

Keyera Corp. is experiencing an unplanned outage at its Wapiti natural sour gas processing and liquid stabilization plant about 60 km south of Grand Prairie, Alta.

Keyera informed Pipestone Energy Corp. on Aug. 17 of an issue relating to the Wapiti plant’s waste heat recovery system that led to the outage, said Pipestone Energy, which has secured long-term natural gas gathering, compression, and processing capacity at the plant, said on Aug. 25.

After performing an inspection of the affected equipment, Keyera said it expects repairs to be completed and the Wapiti plant to resume operations by the week ending Sept. 4, according to Pipestone Energy.

During the ongoing plant outage, Pipestone Energy and Keyera are performing maintenance and installation activities that otherwise would have resulted in planned downtime during late third-quarter and early fourth-quarter 2020.

Despite the plant’s unplanned outage and its estimated duration, Pipestone Energy reaffirmed its 2020 annual production and cash flow guidance released on Aug. 5 of 16,000-17,000 boe/d and $40 million at the midpoint, respectively.

Keyera commissioned Phase 1 of the Wapiti gas plant in May 2019 with gas processing capacity of 150 MMcfd and condensate handling capacity of 25,000 b/sd, and also has approved a second phase of the Wapiti plant scheduled for commissioning in fourth-quarter 2020 that will add another 150 MMcfd of gas processing capacity at the site (OGJ Online, May 31, 2018).