Statoil has joined the Environmental Defense Fund’s Methane Detectors Challenge — a collaboration between oil and natural gas companies, technology developers, environmental groups and government and academic advisors that aims to identify and bring to market new technologies that will help reduce methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations.
EDF says methane emissions present an economic and environmental opportunity for the oil and gas industry. There is a market-wide need for cost-effective technologies that provide continuous detection of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that can escape during production, transportation and delivery of natural gas.
In addition to its impact on the climate, because methane is the primary component of natural gas, it represents a wasted energy resource when it is emitted into the atmosphere.
Statoil joins Anadarko, Apache, BG, Hess, Noble Energy, Shell and Southwestern Energy as an industry partner in this effort. Later in 2015, EDF says some of the companies will select one or more of the most advanced technologies for an initial wave of industry pilot purchases and trial deployments at operating facilities.
“In line with Statoil’s publicly stated ambition to be recognized as the most carbon efficient oil and gas producer, we intend to field test the methane detection technology platform(s) selected under this challenge at one or more production sites in 2016,” says Bruce Tocher, manager for shale oil & gas research at Statoil.
Last week General Electric and Statoil announced the winners of its inaugural Open Innovation Challenge, which focused on addressing the use of sand in unconventional operations. The partners announced the second Open Innovation Challenge — focusing on water in unconventional energy development — earlier this month.