Emerson Exchange 365

The design of most pneumatic devices found in oil and gas fields today hasn’t changed much over the last forty years.  Back in the 1970s, drillers saw natural gas in an oil well as a nuisance rather than a commodity, and environmental regulation was all but nonexistent.  Gas that was used to power pneumatic field equipment was simply vented into the atmosphere in large quantities.  

In recent years, however, with the rise of the natural gas prices and new EPA restrictions on venting natural gas, producers have started to replace these high-bleed pneumatic devices with redesigned low-bleed ones that vent only a fifth as much gas as existing high-bleed pneumatic devices do, while performing the same job. 

But as Adam Winter of Cap-Op Energy,  Brian Van Vliet of Spartan Controls and Muneeb Tariq of Emerson Process Management explained today at the 2014 Emerson Global Users Exchange, the industry has only just begun to take full advantage of the opportunity at hand. 

“The potential savings for upstream operations is huge,” Winter said.  “Studies show that cutting the amount of methane released by implementing a handful of methane reduction opportunities, including low-bleed devices, has the potential to reduce methane emissions by 80 percent and would be the equivalent of getting rid of 50 coal-fired power plants. It would also save $2 billion in revenue from wasted fuel gas” 

“The venting rate of a low-bleed device, such as Emerson’s Fisher C1 Series pneumatic pressure controller, is 4.5 cubic feet per hour of methane—seven times less than a high-bleed pressure controller,” Van Vliet said.  The C1 is easily installed in place of its high-bleed precursor, and in many cases full-scale upgrades can pay for themselves within three years—if government-issued carbon credits are figured into the equation.  That’s where Cap-Op Energy comes in. 

“Carbon credits are an integral part of the full cost savings that can come from switching to low-bleed devices,” Winter said.  “Unfortunately, until now, they haven’t been very easy to come by.  They require capturing and compiling data, filing extensive paperwork, obtaining third-party verification, and all the administrative overhead that comes from dealing with regulatory agencies.  Cap-Op Energy takes the pain out of that process and helps make fuel gas saving projects economically attractive.” 

Working with Emerson, Cap-Op Energy helps determines which low-bleed replacement solutions are most suitable for a customer’s specific operation.  They advise clients on regulatory compliance, help draw up project plans, collect the necessary data, and submit the carbon credit paperwork to the appropriate agencies. 

Cap-Op’s Distributed Energy Efficiency Project Platform (DEEPP) tracks, monitors, and documents carbon emission reductions so producers don’t have to deal with the hassle, greatly improving the return on investment of their energy efficiency projects. 

“ConocoPhillips recently utilized the DEEPP tool for a retrofit involving 323 low-bleed conversion/replacements that is saving them $125,200 every year in fuel gas, plus another $125,730 per year in future carbon credits,” Winter concluded.  “With the credits, the payback on the project was reduced from five years to just two.  Savings from there are pure profit.”