The Environmental Partnership, a coalition of US oil and gas producers, reported on July 31 that it made marked progress in its three performance programs to reduce emissions of methane and volatile organic compounds (VOC) from operations during its first full year of operation in 2018. It also grew from some 20 participants when it was launched during 2017 to 65 producers by the end of last year, now representing more than 80% of the country’s top producers.
“Our industry is taking action to reduce methane emissions from our operations,” said Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute, which played a key part in the EP’s organization. “Through innovative and action-oriented partnerships like this one, we will continue to take action to protect our environment and safely produce and deliver the energy consumers demand.”
The group said its members conducted more than 156,000 leak detection surveys across some 78,000 production sites and found that only 0.16% of the components needed to be repaired, an amount 10 times lower than the US Environmental Protection Agency’s estimated 1.4% leak rate. Ninety-nine percent of these identified leaks were repaired within 90 days, it noted.
EP members also have replaced, retrofitted, or removed from service more than 31,000 high-bleed pneumatic controllers, the group reported. Notably, 38 participating companies no longer employ any high bleed pneumatic controllers in their operations as innovative technologies and newer infrastructure is in place, it said.
It also monitored more than 132,000 manual liquids unloading events in 2018, helping to minimize emissions associated with the removal of liquids and increase each well’s efficiency, the organization said.
Matthew Todd, the group’s program director, said the EP’s more than doubling its membership, valuable industry workshops, and sharing of information and collaboration on techniques and technologies to reduce environmental impacts has provided a model to apply to other industry challenges in the future.
“In our first year, we brought hundreds of representatives from companies of all sizes together,” Todd separately told OGJ. “We’ve hosted workshops near major oil and gas production basins to allow production leaders to learn from technical experts on a variety of topics, focusing on improved performance. We’ve also tried to foster a dialogue to collaborate with other stakeholders, including regulators, academic researchers, developers of new technologies, and equipment manufacturers.”
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