Flare Gas Utilization for Community Agricultural Product Project

In cooperation with the Department of Mineral Fuels, Ministry of Energy and Nong Toom Community in Kong Krailat District, Sukhothai Province located in Sirikit Field area, the biggest onshore oil field in Thailand, PTTEP implements a corporate social development project to strengthen villager career, increase community income and support quality of life improvement.

The Nong Toom Model proves that Oil and Gas company and communities in operations area can live harmoniously. PTTEP delivers the excess associated gas from the Nong Toom Outstation, its Crude Oil Production Station, located 1 kilometer away from the community to serve the Flare Gas for Community Agricultural Product Project.

PTTEP supports the construction of Product Processing Buildings along with the installation of gas transportation system. The excess associated gas which is sold to the Nong Toom Banana Processing Cooperative at a lower price than the market rate of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) serves the community's need of large amount of cooking gas to process their agriproducts. Apart from reduction of community's cooking gas by 50%, this project helps solve environmental problem, maximizes the energy utilization and helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 5,000 tons annually.

Project Implementation

PTTEP installs one–kilometer gas transportation system from Nong Toom Outstation to the Nong Toom Agricultural Product Processing Center in area of 4.74 acres (12 rais) and constructs 4 Product Processing Buildings for 240 cooking stations with public utility system as well as the connecting system from main gas pipeline to the cooking stations at total budget of Thai Baht 60 million.

Gas is transported via pipeline from Nong Toom Outstation to the Nong Toom Agricultural Product Processing Center as shown in flow chart below:

To comply with safety standard and ensure the accuracy of sales gas volume, PTTEP monitors the gas metering unit at the Nong Toom Agricultural Product Processing Center and submits the Sales Gas Calibration Report to the Department of Mineral Fuels on a monthly basis while a representative from the Nong Toom Banana Processing Cooperative Limited participates as an observer.

Location Map of the Nong Toom Agricultural Product Processing Center and Nong Toom Outstation

Twenty–eight households in Nong Toom community, Kong Krailat District, Sukhothai Province set up the Nong Toom Banana Processing Cooperative Limited in 2007. Currently, the Cooperative produces agriproducts such as banana, pumpkin, cassava and taro fritters at the capacity of 60 tons per day.

Cost Saving and Revenue Generating

The Flare Gas Utilization for Community Agricultural Product Project is counted as the authentic Creating Shared Value (CSV) project that initiates value for both Nong Toom Community and PTTEP. It helps solving environmental problem and reducing the Cooperative's cost of cooking gas by 50%.

In 2023, the Cooperative is able to save cost of cooking gas at the amount of THB 42 million or more than USD 1.19 million (compared to market price of LPG). Instead of burning the excess gas at Flare stack, PTTEP makes it to be a low cost cooking gas for the Cooperative which in turn generates income for PTTEP at the approximate amount of THB 9.8 million or USD 280,000.

PTTEP has carried out analysis on Social Return on Investment (SROI) of this project by measuring the social impact of the program with the financial quantification calculation (monetization). This method is intended to measure the value of the financial impact of the program that compares to the value of the impact to the cost of the program that has been invested into. It appears that the value of the SROI ratio is 1.64: 1