Energy News Beat Publishers Note: The Colorado regulations are wide sweeping and not understood by those that created them. Our team is working with the agencies, and affected companies, to help with the data verification process.
Colorado air regulators and oil industry engineers have been on the hunt for fugitive chemical emissions from drill sites and storage facilities for years, and they are now closing in on what may be “the last of the low-hanging fruit” – pneumatic controllers.
The Air Quality Control Commission is set to take up a proposed rule in February to require non-emitting or no-bleed controllers on all new oil and gas projects and at existing sites being upgraded.
“This is the largest remaining source of emissions for us to address … the last of the low-hanging fruit,” said Michael Paules, associate director of API Colorado, an industry trade group.
The ubiquitous devices manage temperatures, pressure and liquid levels at oil and gas facilities and drill pads. The controllers run on natural gas from the well itself and every time they open and close a valve or other mechanism, they release a little bit of gas.
The methane released contributes to Front Range ozone pollution and is a powerful greenhouse gas.
While it is only a smidge of gas – an average 2.8 standard cubic feet of methane an hour (scf/hr), according to one study – there are an estimated 56,000 controllers chugging away in the Front Range oil fields of the Denver-Julesburg or DJ Basin.
“They are the very largest contributor to ground level ozone and methane emissions after tanks,” said Matt Sura, attorney for Conservation Colorado and other environmental groups. “Eliminating them going forward is a huge step.”
The proposed rule has also drawn support from major Colorado oil and gas companies and industry trade groups.
Environmental groups, while applauding the proposal for non-emitting controllers on future or renovated projects, are pressing for the AQCC to also address the controllers already in the field.
Conservation Colorado, along with the League of Oil and Gas Impacted Coloradans and the Western Colorado Alliance for Community Action, has asked the commission to consider requiring non-emitting controllers for any equipment within 1,000 feet of a home.
The Sierra Club and the environmental action group Earthworks have called for the non-polluting devices at any site with four wells or more.
In 2014, the commission issued a rule requiring that new installations use low-bleed controllers, and where possible no-bleed devices.
Chevron Corp. said in an email to The Sun that since the rule was adopted, its methane emissions from pneumatic controllers have dropped by 60% at its DJ Basin operations as equipment has been replaced. Chevron acquired Noble Energy, one of the largest drillers in Colorado, in July.
for the rest of the story: Colorado Sun
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