We were pleased to attend and participate in the Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada (PTAC) Methane Leadership Summit in Banff, Alberta on April 26-27. It was a fantastic event providing an overview of methane elimination targets, regulations, measurement and detection, reduction technologies, success stories and Canada’s role in supporting international Net Zero targets. I felt a true sense of collaboration amongst the corporate, academic, government and research entities that were participating, and in fact, even greater collaboration on an international level was listed several times as the next step in even more impact on methane reduction. Sean Heiber, Emissions Management Engineer from Cenovus, reflected on how the methane reduction community has changed, where over five years ago only a handful of passionate engineers might have attended a methane emissions event, in contrast to the 300 well-informed and passionate forum that gathered this year.
Through the keynote and panelist presentations, and even more so in the question and answer period, it was evident that attendees’ understanding and adoption of methane emissions activities (ranging from measurement to elimination) is very dispersed; while experts exist in each area, we all have much to learn to understand and reduce methane emissions to decrease global greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global warming. Some commercialized solutions, such as instrument air conversions to eliminate vented methane gas from pneumatic devices, is low-hanging fruit to first mover large gas producers, but has not yet been started by smaller producers due to limited capital or exclusion from regulatory criteria due to their size. Government funding and test sites are available to new technologies, but industry hesitation to be the first to test new ideas was still raised as a hurdle to faster learning and implementation of new technologies.
PTAC invited Global Power Technologies to join a panel on Exporting Canadian Technologies. This session helped explain the myriad of Canadian support systems that are available to grow Canada’s strength in supporting methane reduction activities around the globe. We provided global examples of solar hybridization of thermoelectric generators (TEGs) to decrease emissions by 75-99%, high efficiency combined heat and power solutions for operational savings when tanked fuel is required and solar hybrid systems to optimize production uptime and revenue generation through all weather conditions while minimizing emissions. We learned about new international collaborations that can help exporters share technologies, trial new solutions and develop export sales.
Finally, it was interesting to hear about new ideas to address other high contributors to methane emissions in the oil and gas industry around the world including tank venting and methane slip on large engines. Data collection is underway to characterize the breadth and needs of the vented gas sources, and some interesting solutions were presented. Investments are supporting progress, but some large opportunities are still several years away from a preliminary commercial launch. In the near term, various commercial solutions have been proven and are commercially available, and operators seemed excited to apply the new learnings from the conference.
Thanks PTAC - we look forward to further conversations!
