"When you look at the future, the Achilles heel of the gas industry is the methane emissions,'' IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told a Washington event hosted by the American Petroleum Institute on Sept. Minimizing methane leaks from drilling is of such concern to the energy industry that the International Energy Agency in July launched a new online "methane tracker" to provide a global picture of emissions covering eight industry areas across more than 70 countries. Previously, because methane leaks are vented at different points in the process - from wells to pipelines to storage facilities - BP and other companies in the industry all relied on estimates using engineering-based modeling or calculations to understand the scope of the problem. BP does provide information on its best practices to industry groups, such as the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and Oil and Gas Technology Centre. "We would love for others to also adopt the same technology," Watson said, though the technology itself would need to be licenses from BP's individual tech vendors. By "digital trends," Watson was referring to technologies that have come to fruition in the past decade or so from the fields of space, defense and medicine that BP is now combining with oilfield technology.īP indicated it is willing to share the practices it has developed to use in conjunction with the drone and imaging technology with other oil and gas companies. "The enablement of these digital trends is what has actually brought this to reality," said Morag Watson, BP's chief digital innovation officer. BP is already using the technology in Khazzan and will soon retrofit facilities in Trinidad and Sangachal and on all future projects. The drone-mounted leak-detection technologies for continuous measurement of methane will range from the North Sea to the West Texas Permian Basin to the company's giant natural gas Khazzan field in Oman. The drones, hardware and software are supplied by Providence Photonics, Flylogix, PrecisionHawk, SeekOps, Rebellion Gas Cloud Imager and Fieldbit. BP intends to deploy drones equipped with lasers and "methane sniffing" technology that sniffs a sample of gas from the surface toward a sensor. The gas cloud-imaging cameras pick up what the human eye can't, thanks to optic computer technology. The technology uses a hyperspectral camera that can "see" leaks of methane and other gases as they occur. To address the issue, BP is deploying aerial drones and high-tech cameras that can detect invisible gas clouds. "If methane is not properly addressed, it really undercuts any claim natural gas has to being lower-carbon." Logan said methane leakage had gone under the radar, but now investors are cognizant of the problem. "There's a growing concern among investors that the oil and gas industry is making very big bets on natural gas as sort of the foundation for its long-term growth,'' said Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at Ceres, a shareholder advocacy organization focused on sustainability issues. Overall, methane is considered to have 28 to 36 times the "global warming potential" of carbon dioxide. Though methane doesn't last as long as CO 2 (it stays in the environment for about a decade but can have centuries-long impacts on expanding oceans), it has more than 80 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide 20 years after it escapes into the atmosphere. Companies have marketed natural gas as a cleaner source of energy because it emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal, but that reputation is being hampered by the growing concern about methane leaks.Īccording to the Environmental Protection Agency, about 10% of U.S greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 were methane. The industry's methane problem has come into focus with the rise in use of natural gas produced through hydraulic fracturing "fracking" - it is now the top fuel used to produce electricity in the U.S., according to the U.S. That is a big problem for the big oil and gas industry as pressures mount from regulators, climate activists and the companies' own shareholders to address concerns about climate change. It's colorless and odorless, and scientists have recently reported more leaks through energy production than previously known. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is released into the air as a byproduct of oil and natural gas drilling.
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7/31/2023 04:21:44 am
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