Methane emissions fees might soon be coming to a U.S. administration near you! As the technology to monitor and detect these emissions grows, government agencies are looking to cash in on emissions, both financially and in terms of ESG. At the beginning of November 2024, the Biden administration finalized a fee schedule that would only apply to facilities that release more than 25,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent. The fees increase incrementally for the next few years until a fee of $1,500 per metric ton of methane is reached in 2026.
The momentum shifts depending on which party is in power (it’s highly probable the incoming Trump administration will scrap these fees), but as the industry with boots on the ground, oil and gas industry players have the most to lose and/or gain in the emissions measurements movement. It behooves us to be aware, on the cutting edge and leading the charge.
To that end, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) was formed. It’s a CEO-led initiative comprised of 12 of the world’s leading energy companies, which collectively produce around a third of global oil and gas. One of their focus areas includes methane emissions reduction, but before they can effectively reduce emissions, the organization needs ways to quantify them in their current state. This is where emissions monitoring comes in, and several new advancements are beginning to measure what was once unmeasurable.
New Emissions Monitoring Tech
Methane emissions technology spans a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. One technology from TotalEnergies is Airborne Ultralight Spectrometer for Environmental Applications (AUSEA). It was developed in cooperation with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne and commissioned in 2022 to detect and quantify methane and carbon dioxide emissions. The sensor features a diode laser spectrometer capable of detecting and measuring methane emissions with a high level of accuracy (more than 1 kilogram per hour).
This type of technology can focus on hard-to-reach emission points that might be too small for airplane-or satellite-mounted sensors to detect. The 2022 campaign detected and measured emissions on site in real-life conditions for 95 percent of operated sites in the upstream sector. More than 1,200 AUSEA flights were carried out to cover 125 sites in eight countries.
On the nearly opposite end of the spectrum, the OGCI released a white paper from their Satellite Monitoring Campaign (SMC) in March, covering research done in 2022 and 2023. The SMC performed 530 high-resolution observations over 18 sites in Algeria, Kazakhstan and Egypt – six sites in each country – using its own satellites and public satellite data. The campaign has already enabled substantial and quick greenhouse gas mitigation at some locations and has identified additional opportunities for further reductions by continuing to engage with the operators and conduct asset-specific analyses over the next 12 months. As of October 2023, two of the operators in Algeria and Kazakhstan confirmed they were able to mitigate three persistent methane emissions sources. The three sources had a combined average emissions rate of 3,200 kilograms of methane per hour – equivalent to the hourly carbon emissions from almost 4,000 gasoline-fueled passenger vehicles.
In the United States, many production facilities are implementing optical gas imaging (OGI) technology. For example, NASDAQ-listed LightPath is making advancements to the material from which the lens of its emissions monitoring cameras is made by leveraging a non-germanium lens to improve upon current methodologies. Germanium has a leg-up on its periodic table neighbor silica when it comes to transmission range, and it has a higher electrical conductivity. There are also many companies adapting AI to emissions monitoring cameras (see sidebar).
All of these technologies combine human expertise and some form of automation. Methane sensors are getting paired with drones and satellites, and those outputs are getting paired with AI and other algorithms. Data is then utilized to establish mitigation plans, next steps and best practices. Geoscientists are key players in all these processes. We are the ones who can scope the problem, create appropriate sampling methodologies, utilize the appropriate algorithms and guide the action items created by the data.