Economics of Gas Flow Measurement

It seemed very important to have a section on gas flow measurement. The UK's production of natural gas in 1984 was about 35×10⁹ m³ and its consumption about 50×10⁹ m³ with a reserve of about 0.7×10¹² m³.* The value of this gas is 0.43 DM/m³† or about £0.12/m³ or about $0.18/m³. Unfortunately we were unable to find anyone able to write a section for this issue in the time available. However, I am grateful to Mr R J Simpson for drawing my attention to a report by Peignelin et al. † The authors have kindly agreed to an edited version of this paper.

This paper considers two sizes of metering stations and considers the use of orifice or turbine meters. For these stations it considers investment costs and maintenance costs. It then examines the uncertainty in the energy content determination. The paper concludes that the major uncertainty lies in the flowmeter; that while turbine meter installations seem to be lower in cost than orifice meter installations, reliability must also be taken into account; and the cost of the instrumentation is a small proportion (15–20%) of the total cost of the station — R Baker.