Andrew Mercer (independent consultant) presented the business case for carbon data exchange standards. There are today some 46 national carbon-taxing schemes in place, addressing the Paris agreement targets. According to the World Bank*, an increase of carbon prices from $2 (per ton global average 2019) to the $75– 100 range is needed to stay on a Paris-compatible trajectory. This will ‘fundamentally transforming’ commodities supply chains. Mercer sees this as driving demand for low carbon LNG.
* State and Trends of Carbon Pricing, World Bank, 2020
Chris Welsh (PIDX COO and CEO OFS Portal) recapped PIDX activity and standards in the supply chain. The plan is now to extend PIDX standards to allow operators to specify emissions ratings requirements while sourcing, and to identify contracted items’ emissions ratings. This data could be rolled-up into a total, calculated over the lifetime of an item’s deployment. This will extend the PIDD* definitions for materials and services to include greenhouse gas ratings (GHG) for oil country consumables. PIDX has kicked off a workgroup to extend the PIDX XSD and JSON GHG definitions using The Open Group’s Open Footprint work. These will ultimately be embedded in the PIDX invoice/purchase order standards.
* Petroleum Industry Data Dictionary.
David Shackleton (IDS DataNet) warned of the risk of not reporting scope 3 emissions* from regions where the company, its suppliers, or its customers operate. Extended supply chains may pass higher energy or emissions-related costs to customers, risking business interruption. There may be a decreased demand for products with higher emissions that favors competitors’ products. Other risks include GHG-related lawsuits directed at the company or an entity in the value chain, consumer backlash and negative media coverage. But there are also opportunities, since reducing GHG emissions may make for decreased costs and improved operating efficiency. The key here is to be able to demonstrate improvements through disclosure and proactive environmental stewardship. A scope 3 inventory is a best practice that can differentiate companies in an increasingly environmentally-conscious marketplace. In which context, IDS has developed a tool to support the record-report-reduce cycle across well operations lifecycle, presenting drilling performance in the light of GHG emissions. More from IDS.
* Scope 3 emissions come from third party end-use of e.g. oil and gas when it is finally burned.
Kadri Umay (Microsoft) presented a ‘conceptual architecture’ for managing emissions data across the supply chain. Today, emissions data exported from industrial historians goes into Excel and the connection with operational data is lost. Emission reporting is done manually using various models and tools. The result is that emissions are consolidated at different levels and copied to many databases in propriety formats and schemas. Reporting is manual and performed yearly. Adding Scope 3 Emissions makes it even more complex. Umay cited the World Resources Institute’s GHG reporting standard that could be used, along with the PIDX Petroleum Industry Data Dictionary calculate near real-time emissions. Microsoft’s conceptual architecture for automating the emissions lifecycle represents a pipeline taking field emissions data through Azure IoT, Azure emissions models and into an OFF repository running in an OSDU/Azure instance. Output is all rolled-up into the Microsoft Azure Sustainability Calculator.
Mary Sailors (PIDX) also referred to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to argue that PIDX current standards and schemas can be used and extended to support Scope 2 and 3 efforts, extending the PIDX Catalog Schema with emissions data. There are challenges. There are many ongoing industry efforts and a methodology has not yet been locked down. Many such efforts are dependent on volunteer resources that are ‘stretched thin’ due to the current industry environment. Participants in the PIDX Emissions Transparency Data Exchange (ETDX) workgroup include: Baker Hughes, BP, Chevron, Independent Data Services, Microsoft, OFS Portal and Sullexis. The workgroup has figured how the current PIDX schema could be extended to support bi-directional emissions data transfer between suppliers and operators. Sailors also referred to the memorandum of understanding signed with the Shell-sponsored/The Open Group Open Footprint Forum that will allow PIDX to understand the OFF emissions data architecture and use it to extend the PIDX schemas. Here again, PIDX reference data and the 4,100 entries in the PIDD are seen as germane to a joint development. PIDX is also investigating relationships with other forums with a view to collaborating on a minimum viable product for emissions.
More from PIDX.
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