Power engineering firm Siemens has opened one of the world's biggest test centers for large compressor trains for use in the oil and gas industry at a cost of around E100 million, in Duisburg, Germany.
The 180m-long, 40m-wide and 35m-high test center is expected to strengthen Siemens’s position as a major supplier on the oil and gas market. The test center is also reportedly Siemens’s biggest single investment in Europe.
Siemens noted that the rapidly increasing demand for oil and gas is driving the trend towards bigger and bigger compressor trains. The German firm noted that, in the future, oil and gas are going to be extracted at more remote locations, under difficult conditions.
The company said that, in addition to the large-scale construction of new pipelines, liquefaction of natural gas for delivery by tanker is becoming more important. As a result, there is a growing demand for bigger compressor trains for liquefying natural gas. The same equipment is used in processes for converting natural gas into clean liquid fuels and also in the petrochemical industry.
The new test center for the assembly and testing of large compressor trains weighing up to 700 tons each, reportedly caters to this trend. It enables up to six compressor trains to be tested simultaneously.