Development of a method for studying gas imbalance in the section of the main gas pipeline of Kazakhstan

The existing models, methods, and technologies for managing the gas transmission system of the Republic of Kazakhstan have significantly become outdated. Therefore, during the operation of the gas transmission system, the phenomenon of a gas imbalance occurs. The presence of an imbalance leads to unjustifiably high technical and economic losses, as well as disagreements and disputes between consumers and suppliers of gas in the gas transmission system. To eliminate this problem, the task was set to analyse the features of the AS for data collection, gas metering, and detection of an imbalance and its development, taking into account the identified features of the AS method for determining a gas imbalance and identifying the causes of its occurrence. It was proposed to consider a section of the main gas pipeline as a set of gas supply and consumption systems. A two-sided F-test was used as a general indicator of a gas imbalance at the site and for each element of the gas supply and consumption systems. It was shown that a comparison of the variances of samples for individual elements and for the area as a whole identified such reasons for a gas imbalance as measurement errors and changes in the operating modes. The developed method for determining a gas imbalance and identifying the causes of its occurrence makes it possible to assess quantitatively and qualitatively the gas imbalance at the section of the main gas pipeline and to determine the most significant cause of this imbalance. The developed method was tested while analysing the metering data on gas transportation in the section of the main gas pipeline ‘Bukhara Gas-Bearing Region – Tashkent–Bishkek–Almaty’ for two calendar months. We analysed the data on the equality of the variances of the gas supply and consumption systems in this section, as well as the equality of the variances of the samples describing the operation of individual elements of these systems for two months. Solution options were proposed, which made it possible to formulate a conclusion about a change in the value of the gas imbalance and the main reason for this chang