Inventory of Methane Sources at Upstream Oil & Gas Facilities

Who: Upstream Oil and Gas Producers

What: Inventory of methane emitting equipment

Where: Western Canada

When: December 2017

Why: Why does my company need an inventory of Methane emitting equipment?

Federal Government

Canadian Federal Regulations on Methane Reduction were issued under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act for comment in Gazette I in May of 2017. Public comment closed at the end of July. Implementation of the regulations could start as early as 2020.

A registration report for EACH FACILITY will be due to the Federal Government following the publication of the regulation in Gazette II (expected in Spring 2018).

Alberta Government

The Alberta government is predicting they will issue draft regulations on Methane in the first half of 2018, which will, of course, be followed by comment and revision periods. It is unknown at this point what exact registration or inventory reports will be required by the Alberta Government, but undoubtedly there will be some type of reporting required.

In regards to both Federal and Provincial regulations, facilities in Western Canada will, at some level, be required to know where they are emitting methane and have an estimate for how much, as well as a plan for reducing that emission. In order to do that, the first place to start is an inventory of methane-emitting equipment.

Here are Process Ecology’s recommendations for general categories of inventory:

Pneumatic Controllers at each facility (that run on fuel gas):
Pneumatic Pumps
Compressors
Dehydrators
Flares on site
Boilers and Heaters
Venting logs – if they exist – for the past year.
Tanks
Surface Casing Vents
Fugitives

Please contact us for a more detailed breakdown of what data you should capture for each category in your inventory.

We also offer the online system: Methane Emissions Advisor, which you can use to help with this inventory and methane/GHG emission inventory task, as well as identifying targets for reduction.