How A Gas Compressor Station Works
The natural gas compressor station plays a vital role in the oil and gas industry. Companies construct these stations along natural gas pipelines and use them to compress gas so it can continue flowing downstream to its final destination, which may be a processing facility, a storage tank, or retail or utility companies.
In this natural gas compressor station map, the blue lines are interstate pipelines. Like an interstate highway, these go across states.
Each red square represents a compressor station. They are located approximately every 40-100 miles depending on the factors like volume, pipeline diameter, terrain and destination.
Below we'll walk through a typical natural gas compression station layout and explain how each piece of equipment works.
The inlet pipe on a compressor station comes from underground and carries natural gas from many different sites. On the video, over 500 well sites are flowing into this station with a flow volume over 45 MMCFD.
