Case Study: Solving Methane – A Story of Collaboration
18 March 2024
Climate Investment (CI), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), SensorUp, and Occidental (Oxy) worked together to rapidly solve a complex and widespread data management problem
Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating. Preventing them from midstream and upstream oil and gas operations is one of the largest opportunities for the energy sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. As more regulations – including the Waste Emissions Charge in the US – come into effect, and the industry works towards its own emission targets, reducing methane is a key priority.
Many companies with diverse technologies, including sensors, satellites, aircraft, and drones, provide continuous monitoring of methane emissions. However, the enormous quantity of data generated by these technologies may be inefficient to process and challenging to interpret as a single source of consolidated, verified data. Acknowledging this challenge on oil and gas operators, both large and small, Climate Investment collaborated with Oxy to develop a solution.
Identifying need
CI and Oxy began by mapping the problem. Regulatory and market pressures to reduce methane intensity, the need to implement effective abatement strategies, and navigating the intricacies of reporting all fed into a blueprint for the required solution. Operators needed clear, actionable and accurate information. BCG (Boston Consulting Group) was then engaged to facilitate the design process and streamline the requirements.
Using its extensive combined network, CI and BCG went to market to find a company able to address all these requirements. They found a NATO-awarded, end-to-end methane emissions management software platform created by SensorUp that met the brief.
SensorUp collects data from across the spectrum of emissions detection technologies and aggregates it to build 360 operations visibility. Unifying data in one platform empowers operators track methane, analyze root causes, and report more accurately. By producing actionable information, the SensorUp platform makes responding to detected methane more efficient.
Proving the concept
Recognizing SensorUp’s potential impact, CI worked to advance the solution for operational testing and forged a connection between SensorUp and OGCI member company Oxy.
Oxy was an early adopter of several methane detection technologies, but identified significant value in managing all methane data together in a single application. Eager to bring all of these technologies together, Oxy agreed to become a design partner and trial the software. The collaborative approach CI, BCG, Oxy, and SensorUp built real-world insights into the SensorUp platform quickly and established confidence early in the project.
“We are committed to reducing methane emissions in our operations, and our decision to use SensorUp Gas Emissions Management Solution aligns with Oxy’s net zero targets and helps advance our low carbon business objectives. Our teams will use SensorUp to help accelerate leak detection and repair while moving toward more measurement-based emissions inventories,” said Richard Jackson, President, Operations, U.S. Onshore Resources and Carbon.
BCG mobilized a team that resided within Oxy for the first two months of the project to help implement the blueprint. Working with SensorUp’s Emission Management Suite, the team created a comprehensive methane platform specification for deployment to Oxy, and other oil and gas customers of all sizes.
Speaking to the multiple benefits the platform offers, CI’s managing director for commercialization, Daniel Palmer, explained “We wanted something that not only helps solve the methane problem, but additionally offers a business opportunity for our member companies. SensorUp’s innovative platform makes data more actionable, benefitting Oxy from a business and environmental point of view, whilst boosting the innovative portfolio companies we invest in.”
SensorUp’s end-to-end methane emissions management platform delivers a single source of consolidated, verified, and compliant data, empowering operators to achieve efficient and rapid emission reductions and operational improvements.
Geographic coverage and applicability
North America with selected key projects in Europe, LATAM, and Asia/Africa.
Customer benefits and value
- Streamline detection management
- Reduce time to repair and prevent lost gas
- Methane leak root cause analysis
- Visualize and compare assets
- Reduce reported emissions
- Agnostic multi-sensor approach
Awards/ Certification/Compliance
- NATO
- SOC-2 certified, ensuring the protection
of corporate and customer data through
comprehensive security measures that meet
compliance requirements - SensorUp can automate reporting for
emissions data and calculations, regulatory
and voluntary reporting, OGMP 2.0
adherence, regional compliance, and business
reporting - Pioneered and spearheaded global sensor
web standards for the United Nations’ ITU-T
and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
Available videos to watch
Key Customer
Leadership:
Terry Cunningham
Website:
www.sensorup.com
Contact person:
Fernando Lopez (Houston, Texas)
fernando.lopez@sensorup.com
“We are committed to reducing methane emissions in our operations, and our decision to use SensorUp Gas Emissions Management Solution aligns with Oxy’s net zero targets and helps advance our low carbon business objectives. Our teams will use SensorUp to help accelerate leak detection and repair while moving toward more measurement-based emissions inventories.”
Richard Jackson, President, Operations, U.S. Onshore Resources and Carbon, Occidental (Oxy)
Scaling impact
The collaborative approach taken by SensorUp, Oxy, BCG and CI resulted in rapid development of a platform that allows oil and gas companies to comprehensively understand their emissions profile. That understanding enables prompt identification and mitigation of methane leaks, which, if halved this decade would have a 0.3-degree positive impact by 2045.
Centralizing data to a single, bespoke platform provides oil and gas operators additional benefits, including streamlining regulatory compliance and operational insight into the root causes of emissions – helping to prevent future events. Significantly improving accuracy also eliminates the need for assumptions, such as mean duration assumptions, that can lead to overestimating emissions and higher charges.
The platform’s scalability ensures that as operations evolve and emissions monitoring requirements expand, SensorUp can scale with requirements. Oxy’s Director of Production Operations Technology, Jeremy Underwood, attesting to the significant advancements achieved from working with SensorUp, commented: “The progress we’ve made so far has been nothing short of remarkable.”
