Improving Methane Measurement Practices and Technology in Canada's Oil and Gas Industry

Canada’s federal government is expected to release new regulations later this year to strengthen its regulations around methane emissions. 

Any new regulation will require accurate and reliable data on methane emissions sources. So, how can current methane emissions measurement practices and technologies be improved?

Ahead of our Methane Mitigation Canada Summit, we caught up with Jonathan Bryan, Technical Director at NGIF Emissions Testing Centre, to discuss the challenges he sees with current practices and technology, and how operators can address them.

NGIF Emissions Testing Centre is a branch of the Alberta-based NGIF, a clean-tech venture capital fund. The centre offers cleantech startups an opportunity to test their innovations in live industrial gas operations.

In this interview, Jonathon Bryan discusses his work at the NGIF Emissions Testing Centre and offers his advice to operators looking to determine the optimal mix of technologies.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: What do you see as the current gaps in methane measurement practices and technologies in oil and gas?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: One of the biggest gaps that we have is measuring continuous versus non-continuous emissions.

Our current regulations work well for continuous emissions, for instance, if you have a fugitive emission such as a leak on a line or a hatch that isn't seated properly. Every few months an operator can go around with an OGI camera and find these emissions sources.

The challenge with non continuous sources, such as a release from a tank or other non-routine emissions, is that you can miss these even if you have a flyover technology. There are times when the emissions will be present and times when they won’t.

Measurement practices are now more regular – both continuous and higher frequency. Indeed, I think that's where we need to go.

However, when we're looking at continuous sensors, we’re still seeing a gap in how to use the data quantitatively. There are various solutions out there, good hardware solutions that can measure the amount of methane that a sensor detects. But how do you translate that into a measured emission source point and a measured emission rate?

The other area where we still see a gap is understanding methane slip out of exhaust streams. This is an emission source that has not always been measured. We understand now more now that this can be a significant source of emissions at facilities but we're still looking for good reliable technologies that you can use to measure and quantify these sources and address them.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: How do you think we can start to close some of these gaps and improve our measurement practices?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: I think it's going to be a combination of group and individual efforts. A lot of companies are working independently to try and quantify emissions on their own. They're doing machine learning and applying AI-based approaches and they're putting a lot of effort into to trying to understand how they can relate the measurements from their tools to emission sources.

There are other outfits that are working on establishing frameworks that would help give everybody a jumping off point or a common place to start when quantifying emissions.

I think the quantification gap will be closed by having some common framework and then people layering in their IP.

Additionally, it is important to verify these quantification techniques and validate the results so that users can be confident in the accuracy of the data.

Diana Davis, NGIF: Are there technologies and companies in the Canadian market that are looking to address some of these issues?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: There are many Canadian companies with proposed solutions who want be able to address emissions in the Canadian market.

That’s where NGIF Capital is unique and different from other cleantech venture companies, through NGIF Emissions Testing Centre Program we provide these early energy startups the ability to test and validate their proprietary technology.

We’re not grading them but, rather, in collaboration with our partners the University of Calgary and Tourmaline Oil Corp., we provide them a working lab and live testing centre, to make improvements and prove their technology. We are attempting to promote more Canadian startups to get on the commercial stage.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: And how do you do that at the Emissions Testing Centre?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: At the Emissions Testing Centre (ETC), we identified that companies have trouble transitioning from a controlled environment like a lab or simulation environment to a live operation. There are other good testing centers like METEC in Colorado and Carbon Management Canada here in Alberta, which are field based but still controlled emission release systems.

To go from a controlled state into a completely live operation is a whole other challenge. There are all sorts of unforeseen events that test robustness.

For instance, climatic challenges, Alberta winters are very cold and snowy, and you need to make sure that equipment works over extended time periods in extreme temperatures without sunlight.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: I’ve been told that methane measurement and mitigation technology is akin to kind of cooking: you create your own “recipe” from several different sensors, deployment methods and analytics technology. Are there any particularly promising new technologies or new technology areas that you see emerging?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: I like the cooking analogy. When you start out with cooking, you need to know what you are preparing. Similarly, in methane measurement, you need to understand what you’re trying to achieve, which is an important first step.

There are many different types of technologies like satellites, aircrafts, even drones, that are good at identifying bigger emissions.

These are the kinds of technologies that perform particularly well if your objective is to identify your major emission sources so that you can swiftly address them and solve the major issues, as they can test a variety of pollutants across many locations or facilities in a single day. That means you can swiftly review your inventory and address your major issues.

If your goal is to become net zero or really reduce all emissions, you could consider using a long-term monitoring or tweak the range to a higher frequency. High frequency mobile sensors or a fixed sensor method may be required for these.

Fixed sensors have their own set of challenges. In order for fixed sensors to detect methane emissions, methane must come into contact with them for the sensors to function. The methane emission plume must therefore find a route to pass past the sensor, which might be difficult depending on dispersion and shifting wind directions. These could need the use of high frequency mobile sensors or a stationary sensor strategy.

Operators will often try to fix these issues by building a network of sensors, for instance putting sensors around the whole perimeter of their facility.

We're conducting modeling research in collaboration with the University of Calgary to determine the likelihood that the plume will simply pass over the top, below, or over the sensors if an emission source point is located high in the air and the wind is blowing at a specific speed. We hope to give consumers that modeling input so they may enhance their instruments.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: What are the strengths and weaknesses of some of the different technologies used to address methane emissions?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: One of the big challenges – and we touched on this earlier – is the robustness of the technology. Sensors require power and they’re often solar-powered so that they can work in remote areas. In the winter here we get long dark days without much sunlight and there is snow cover; you need to understand how these systems will work under those conditions.

On the control side, there's also a challenge around robustness. For instance, many operators are looking to replace methane-powered pneumatic instruments. If you replace equipment with air-powered or electrically powered systems, you must ensure that the new equipment meets the same level of robustness and reliability as the old. Nobody likes it when their operation goes down due to equipment failure.

Coming back to our work at the ETC, many of the technologies that we're looking at are pre-commercial. In the evolution of a product, there is often a time when it doesn’t work as well.

Therefore, we strive for a "fail and fix" philosophy so that you can visit the testing facility to determine whether your prototype is performing as you anticipated. If not, you must address the problems before trying again.  We wish to provide businesses with the opportunity to test their prototypes in actual settings.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: Are there certain technologies that would be more expensive and, therefore, potentially cost prohibitive to put into the live environment?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: Most of the technology providers understand this when they're thinking about their applications. Due to the extensive instrumentation and analysis needed, certain technologies are intrinsically more expensive. People tend to associate certain situations more with mobile technologies. You don't purchase one and leave it at your site indefinitely; instead, you implement it there for a few weeks to baseline your emissions before moving it to another location.

Permanent installs, by contrast, must be cheaper to make it economic for operators to enable the breadth of coverage required, such as in the perimeter network of fixed sensors that I mentioned earlier.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: The technology landscape is incredibly vast - we're talking hundreds of potential combinations. What's your advice to operators that are starting to look at this technology landscape and figure out the best recipe for them?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: There are companies and organizations that are trying directly to tackle that question.

Some of our partner organizations, for instance, are developing software that takes in the information from different measurement sources and layer in an interpretation of the strengths and weaknesses of each technology to measure big emissions or small emissions or continuous or discontinuous events. These solutions will then output for you a solution around the opportunities for reducing the emissions in your operations.

The problem right now is that you need to have this data on hand to use software of that kind; if you don't have any inputs, the software can't perform the task for you.

There are also some excellent specialists in this field. There are several consulting firms in Alberta that have a thorough understanding of the problems and can offer operators a lot of assistance.

Energy companies are also quite open to collaborating and talking to one another on how they’re meeting these challenges. They may not be willing to tell you what their site-specific emissions are but they're often willing to tell you what they've tried and what worked and didn't work for them and the reasons why. There's a lot of experience out there that you can leverage to help yourself.

Diana Davis, Industrial Decarbonization Network: What are you hoping to get out of the Methane Mitigation Canada summit?

Jonathan Bryan, NGIF: I'm very excited about the conference. These conferences are wonderful places to exchange ideas and really learn from one another's experiences.

I'm excited to talk more about our work at the NGIF Emissions Testing Centre and learn more about where we all are in this measurement space.

Interested in learning more about this topic?

With updated federal regulations due later this year, it is now imperative that the Canadian oil and gas industry come together to identify, measure, monitor and eliminate methane emissions across their operations while meeting the global demand for affordable and reliable oil and natural gas. Join over 150 of your peers at the Methane Mitigation Canada Summit on September 6-7 to discuss how to leverage cost-effective solutions to identify, measure, monitor and eliminate emissions. Download the agenda for more information.