There was a time when ensuring the safety of a place meant sending a security guard with a flashlight to patrol the property. This approach left a window of opportunity between rounds for people with ill intentions to cause damage. It all changed when affordable security cameras came to the market. Although security guards are still needed, they can now be better utilized.
A similar shift is happening with methane emissions. Oil and gas producers need to perform regular OGI inspections to prove compliance with methane emission regulations. Until recently, this was limited to manual inspections using expensive handheld cameras. The market is changing, and now there are methane detection cameras that can continuously monitor sites for methane emissions. None are lower in cost or more reliable than the Kuva camera, which helps companies achieve regulatory compliance and frees site personnel from having to walk around looking for intermittent emissions.
It is often said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Sitting in front of a judge with an EPA panel on the other side of the discussion table is not how oil and gas producers want to spend their time. It is not worth the time, the negative press, and the risk, even if a somewhat beneficial agreement is reached. Just the time invested in preparing for and negotiating with the EPA is orders of magnitude more expensive than implementing a Kuva solution. By allowing you to find and fix super emitters before they get detected and reported by EPA or by third parties, Kuva helps you keep the money in your pocket and the methane out of the environment—a true win-win situation.
Kuva enables you to find and fix super emitters before they get detected and reported by EPA or by third parties.
The typical cost of consent decrees is millions of dollars. Contact us for a payback analysis for your assets.
Method 22 is a test method established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for determining fugitive emissions from material sources and smoke emissions from flares. It involves direct visual observations to determine the duration of visible emissions (VE) caused by the operation of an industrial source. This method is applicable for the determination of the frequency of fugitive emissions from stationary sources, only as specified in an applicable subpart of the regulations. It does not require the determination of opacity levels, but rather determines the amount of time that visible emissions occur during the observation period.
Emissions can last for hours or days. Using Method 22 to assess the duration of visible emissions does not require an observer to watch for hours or days continuously. Instead, the method involves observing for specific periods and then extrapolating from those observations.
Method 22 involves structured short-term observations to estimate the presence of visible emissions. Here’s an example of how it works:
Observation Details:
Steps:
Duration of Observations: During each 6-minute observation period, the observer will make 24 checks (since 6 minutes = 360 seconds, and 360 seconds divided by 15 seconds per check equals 24 intervals).
Multiple Observations: The observer conducts this 6-minute observation multiple times throughout the day. For this example, let’s say the observer does this 10 times.
Recording Data: For each 6-minute period, the observer notes how many of the 24 intervals showed visible emissions.
Example Calculation:
From the above example, you can infer that visible emissions were present approximately 57.5% of the time based on the sampled observation periods or you can get a Kuva camera to automate this process.
Kuva enables you to find and fix super emitters before they get detected and reported by EPA or by third parties.
The typical cost of consent decrees is millions of dollars. Contact us for a payback analysis for your assets.
In-person OGI inspections, whether conducted 4 times or 12 times a year depending on your location, were once a fact of life for oil and gas companies, primarily serving to earn a checkmark indicating compliance.
New technology, such as Kuva’s low-cost camera, now offers a superior alternative. Approved by Colorado as a substitute for in-person OGI inspections, Kuva cameras not only secure your compliance checkmark but also enhance your awareness of site emissions, preempting issues related to methane emissions.
While emissions regulations still mandate one in-person OGI inspection per year, installing a Kuva camera eliminates the need for additional inspections on your site.
It is often said that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Sitting in front of a judge with an EPA panel on the other side of the discussion table is not how oil and gas producers want to spend their time. It is not worth the time, the negative press, and the risk, even if a somewhat beneficial agreement is reached. Just the time invested in preparing for and negotiating with the EPA is orders of magnitude more expensive than implementing a Kuva solution. By allowing you to find and fix super emitters before they get detected and reported by EPA or by third parties, Kuva helps you keep the money in your pocket and the methane out of the environment—a true win-win situation.
Kuva enables you to find and fix super emitters before they get detected and reported by EPA or by third parties.
The typical cost of consent decrees is millions of dollars. Contact us for a payback analysis for your assets.
The Oil & Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0) is a comprehensive, measurement-based reporting framework for the oil and gas industry that improves the accuracy and transparency of methane emissions reporting. It’s a multi-stakeholder partnership that includes oil and gas companies, international organizations, governments, and non-governmental organizations.
OGMP 2.0 establishes five reporting levels, with the highest level, Level 5, requiring that companies reconcile their source-level (Level 4) emission inventories with measurements at the site level. This means integrating bottom-up source-level reporting with independent site-level measurements.
OGMP Level 5 is about collecting equipment-specific emissions, measured data, and individual quantification of events, and reconciling these with site-level measurements. It’s a comprehensive approach to understanding and mitigating methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.
An emission inventory is an accounting of the amount of pollutants discharged into the atmosphere. It usually contains the total emissions for one or more specific greenhouse gases or air pollutants, originating from all source categories in a certain geographical area and within a specified time span, usually a specific year. Emission inventories are developed for a variety of purposes, such as tracking progress towards emission reduction targets, developing strategies and policies, and for scientific use.
Uncertainty in emission inventories can arise from various factors, including measurement errors, methodological choices, and gaps in data. Reducing uncertainty is vital as it improves the accuracy and reliability of the inventory, which is crucial for tracking progress towards emission reduction targets, it enhances the credibility and transparency of the inventory, which is important for policy-making and public trust, it helps identify areas where further research and data collection are needed, and it allows for better risk assessment and decision-making.
Intermittent gas emissions can pose a problem for measurement and monitoring because if the gas measurement tool doesn’t catch these intermittent emissions, it could lead to underestimation of the total emissions.
For oil and gas companies, reporting about the absence of methane emissions is becoming more important as topics such as differentiated gas and methane intensity self-commitments, take center stage in upcoming reporting requirements from the key markets of European Union and Japan. The expanding trend of having to produce methane emissions reports is also part of the new USE SEC 10k reporting requirements, and it will impact the whole supply chain for the industry.
Kuva is a standoff detection method, gas does not need to be transported to the camera to be detected. We also do not need any dispersion modelling for detections. Instead we are a spectroscopy based instrument just like an open path detector. We are also unique amongst emissions monitoring solutions in that we are the only solution with integrated false alarm screening to enable field operations to trust alerts received.
Although the main purpose of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) and specifically its Subpart W is not to rank operators, but rather to provide accurate and transparent information about greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector, the data reported under Subpart W can indeed be used to compare and potentially rank operators based on their emissions. This can provide valuable information to regulators, investors, and the public about the environmental performance of different operators.
There have been several instances where the data reported under regulations like Subpart W have been used to compare and potentially rank operators based on their emissions. Here are a few examples:
It is not rocket science: having to send a truck and crew to do OGI inspections to diverse sites is more expensive and carries more risks than having a fully proven autonomous solution already on site.
The Kuva solution offers the lowest total-cost-of-ownership for complex upstream sites. With a payback time under 6 months thanks to proprietary technology that allows us to offer the first scalable visual solution for methane monitoring without sacrificing performance.
Contact us for custom calculation of your payback time.
