Webinar: Reducing gas flaring - monetising gas instead - understanding what is possible

Case study from the Wressle oilfield, Lincolnshire, UK 0

Friday, June 30, 2023, Webinar, Online

Oil and gas companies, regulators and NGOs all understand that gas flaring is bad, with environmental, health and financial damage. And it can no longer be hidden, now it can be identified and quantified with satellite imagery, and worldwide flaring data is now being shared. They should look for ways to make money from the gas instead of wasting it.

Yet in many cases, flaring cannot be avoided – gas is produced together with oil which cannot be used without pipelines or liquefaction facilities, and the volumes are not big enough to justify building it. Also sometimes gas needs to be flared for unplanned reasons such as equipment breakdown.

We’ll explore the issues in our webinar on June 30th.

We’ll have a case study from the Wressle oilfield, Lincolnshire, UK, which began production of 500 barrels a day in 2021, showing what the flaring looks like on a satellite, and how the operator, Egdon Resources, is finding a way to monetise the gas by selling to a nearby power station.

We’ll have a broader view from Peter Sawyer of WSS Energy, about the commercial and engineering challenges of monetising small volumes of gas, showing how the costs of flare gas processing and export to market can be prohibitively high, with many operators still viewing gas as a waste stream rather than a potential source of revenue.

Flare gas recovery can work if you have a clean methane stream with high pressure and a high flow rate with a simple export route. But most volumes of flared gas are the opposite, low pressure, containing hydrogen sulphide and other contaminants, variable flow rates and distant from any processing facilities.

Peter has been working with operators in South America and the Middle East to assess the feasibility of challenging flare gas recovery through gas to power, LPG and gas sweetening – with his experience showing there is no one size fits all solution.

Nobody is suggesting that flaring is fine, but a better understanding of what reductions, and how fast reductions, can be achieved within commercial constraints, might be useful, for both planned and unplanned flaring. And further, if we could establish shareable ‘templates’ about proven workable methods to reduce flaring that could be very helpful to all.

In its 2022 Global Gas Flaring Tracker, the World Bank reported that, in 2021, 144 billion cubic metres of gas - almost double the UK's annual consuption - was needlessly burnt in flares at upstream oil and gas facilities across the globe, resulting in approximately 400 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions, of which 361 MMtCO2e was in the form of CO2 and 39 MMtCO2e was in the form of methane.

Agenda

13:00

Karl Jeffery - editor - Finding Petroleum

Welcome & Introducton


Karl Jeffery is editor and co-founder of Digital Energy Journal, and conference producer of Finding Petroleum. He is also publisher of Carbon Capture Journal and Tanker Operator, and co-founder of Digital Ship, a publishing and events company covering digital technology for the deep sea maritime industry. He has a BEng in chemical engineering from Nottingham University

Finding Petroleum
Finding Petroleum was established to help the oil and gas industry network, and stay up to date on the latest technological developments. It does this via hosting regular events and with an online social network of nearly 10,000 members.
13:05

David Bamford - Director - Future Energy Partners Ltd

Flaring - No Hiding Place!

Talk Description.
Satellite images, typically from VIIRS sensors, have appeared in public to demonstrate the scale of flaring in countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
What is less well known is the amount of flaring in the US onshore basins, for example the Permian Basin, offshore in the UKCS, and onshore UK.

These areas will be illustrated using data from Terrabotics, revealing the surprising extent of the practice of flaring, and giving the lie to suggestions that flaring is somehow being reduced (a confirmation of the World Bank view that globally the volume has been flatlining for several years).
David Bamford is well known around the oil & gas industry both as an explorer and a geophysicist. He holds a Physics degree from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham.

Since 2004, he has been a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc, being recruited for this position especially for his exploration knowledge. He serves on the Nominations and Remuneration Committees, and was chairman of the latter, and Senior Independent Director, for 3 years prior to his retire from the board at the end of April 2014.

He joined the board of Premier Oil in May 2014.

He retired from BP plc in 2003, his last four positions being Chief Geophysicist (1990-1995), Business Unit Leader (General Manager) for first West Africa and then Norway (1995-1999), and finally Head of Exploration until 2003.

He has served on the boards of Paras Ltd, a small exploration and IS/IT consulting company in which he held 22% equity, until its sale to RPS Energy in 2008 and Welltec a/s, a Danish well engineering company, as the nominee of the private equity investor Riverside.
From 2012 to 201 he was on the board of ASX-quoted Australia Oriental Energy as a non-executive director.

He was a founder of Richmond Energy Partners, a small oil & gas research house, and several media companies that focus on the oil & gas sector, and has served as an advisor to Alliance Bernstein, Opus Executive, the Parkmead Group plc, and Kimmeridge Energy LLP. Since retiring from BP, he has undertaken asset and company valuation projects for investment banks, hedge funds and small oil companies.

Future Energy Partners Ltd
Future Energy Partners (FEP) is a unique oil and gas advisory service which prides itself on technical excellence in selected fields and supplementing business management and leadership; in the face of uncertainty.

We offer truthful, professional opinion and advice; no playback of what you already know, and no spin.

FEP was founded by 4 senior industry practitioners who consider the challenges faced by today's oil and gas environment are going to require herculean acts of leadership and technical skill in a transforming, transitioning, industry, in order to maintain an energy supply that is sustainable and even recognisable compared to recent history.

Similarly nations developing an oil and gas industry face related challenges as they seek to maximise the benefits of this new wealth-creating opportunity - in a responsible manner.

Global reach

FEP actively participates in the facilitation and conduct of seminars and webinars worldwide, for example in conjunction with its associate partner Finding Petroleum.

Our presence reaches parts of the globe, such as: the UK, the USA, Sub-Saharan Africa, with partners wherever we work.
13:15

Martin Durham - Technical Director - Egdon Resouces

Gas Monetisation at Wressle (Title TBC)


Martin Durham was president of PESGB in 2019. He is a former exploration manager with Northern Petroleum, and former principal geologist with ENI, among other roles.

Egdon Resouces
13:25

Peter Sawyer - Business Development Director - WSS Energy

Mitigation & Reduction of Flaring (Title TBC)


An experienced Chartered Engineer, manager and energy sector business consultant with a background in ESG and sustainability program delivery, business intelligence, technology commercialisation, digitalisation and broader business strategy. Experience in Norway, UK, South East Asia, USA, ME and Latin/Southern America.

WSS Energy
13:50

Speaker from - - Finding Petroleum x

Q&A followed by Close no later than 1415


Finding Petroleum x
test

Sponsors of this event

Registered Delegates

Ben Lunnon-Wood
CEO / Founder
Big Sky Theory
United Kingdom
Graham Sadler
Director
G J Sadler Consulting Ltd
United Kingdom
Denis MOUGENOT
Chief Geophysicist - retired as consultant
Sercel-retired
France
Dirk Bodnar
Manager
El Pilar Petrotechnical Consulting
United States
Tim Davies
Director
Moa Energy
United Kingdom
Tunde Salami

Tedros
Greg Coleman
CEO
Future Energy Partners
United Kingdom
Patricia Pinter
Upstream Energy Transition Specialist
S&P Global
United Kingdom