Ryder Scott has performed a reserves audit of a potential geothermal energy acquisition by client Cyrq Energy. The audit involved thermal modeling with the CMG STARS simulator and decline-curve analysis using a modified version of PHDWin. The work has led Ryder Scott to suggest that the SPE extends its PRMS resources management system to cover geothermal evaluation and reporting*. More from Ryder Scott.
* See also some prior art from Indonesia’s Ametis Institute.
GeoX Energy has secured an $11 million investment from Nabors Industries to fund a part of a 50 MW supercritical geothermal pilot project that GeoX plans to complete by the end of 2022.
Sage Geosystems has secured a $12 million financing from Nabors ($10 million) and Virya ($2 million) to accelerate the commercialization of geothermal energy.
ExxonMobil and Rosneft are to cooperate on the assessment of lower-carbon technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their operations. The companies will new CCS projects and the development of lower-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia. More from ExxonMobil.
Eleven companies* have ‘expressed interest’ in supporting the large-scale deployment of CCS technology in Houston, with plans for ‘up to 50 million metric tons of CO2 per year by 2030 and about 100 million metric tons by 2040’.
* Calpine, Chevron, Dow, ExxonMobil, INEOS, Linde, LyondellBasell, Marathon Petroleum, NRG Energy, Phillips 66 and Valero.
Ineos Oil & Gas and Wintershall DEA head-up Denmark’s Greensand CCS Project which is to inject CO2 into the offshore Nini West reservoir. Partners include Aker Carbon Capture, and Welltec which is to provide well materials testing at its new full-scale CO2 test loop at Esbjerg.
Gassnova has just published its lessons learned report to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on the Longskip CCS FEED project.
Pembina Pipeline and TC Energy have partnered on the Alberta Carbon
Grid, a ‘world-scale carbon transportation and sequestration solution’.
The ACG will leveraging existing pipelines and a newly developed
sequestration hub with a capacity of over 20 million tonnes of
CO2/year. The ACG will connect the Fort McMurray region, the Alberta
industrial heartland, and the Drayton Valley region to key
sequestration locations and delivery points across the province,
serving multiple industries. More from Pembina.
Baker Hughes and Borg CO2 to are to develop a carbon capture and storage hub in the Viken region of Norway. The facility will have a 630 kilotonne/yr capacity. CO2 from an industrial cluster will be liquified, shipped and stored by the Northern Lights joint venture.
Navigator CO2 Ventures is planning to expand pipeline capacity and proceed with multiple sequestration sites, creating an injection capacity of ‘up to 12 million metric tonnes per year’.
The Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has announced two areas for CO2 storage. Parties interested in subsea CCS on the Norwegian have until 9 December 2021 to apply for permits. NPD has also updated its CO2 storage atlas for the continental shelf.
Shell’s proposed ‘Polaris’ large-scale CCS project is to capture CO2
from its Scotford, Alberta refinery and chemicals plant. The initial
phase is expected to start operations around the middle of the decade,
subject to a final investment decision by Shell expected in 2023. The
initial phase has a 750 kilotonne/yr CO2 capacity, reduce plant
emissions by 30-40% and creating 2,000 jobs. Polaris CCS is also to
contribute to Canada’s first ‘hydrogen hub’ with the potential for
large-scale blue hydrogen production in future phases. More from Shell.
Talos Energy and Storegga Geotechnologies have formed a joint venture to source, evaluate and develop CCS opportunities on the US Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Storegga is an EU CCS specialist and lead developer of the Acorn CCS and Acorn Hydrogen Projects. More from Talos.
Sinopec has initiated the Qilu-Shengli Oilfield CCUS project, a demonstrator for large-scale CCUS in China. The project has an estimated megaton/year capacity. Chinese oilfields’ large initial oil in place are said to be suitable for CO2-flood enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
Endress and Hauser is sponsoring the ‘Green Hydrogen Coalition’, supporting the vision of at-scale green
hydrogen deployment and multi-sectoral decarbonization. More from
Endress and Hauser.
Chevron New Energies and Caterpillar are to develop hydrogen demonstration projects in transportation and stationary power applications. The collaboration is to confirm the feasibility and performance of hydrogen for use as a viable alternative to traditional fuels for line-haul rail and marine vessels. The collaboration also seeks to demonstrate hydrogen’s use in prime power.
McDermott has joined the US Government’s H2@Scale project. H2@Scale is a demonstrator for hydrogen and fuel cell technologies run from the US DoE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The project is to show that renewable hydrogen can be a cost-effective fuel for multiple end-use applications, including fuel cell electric vehicles, along with large, baseload consumers that use hydrogen for clean, reliable stationary power.
The PosHYdon project, said to be the world’s first offshore green hydrogen pilot on a working platform, has received backing from RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, to the tune of €3.6 million. PosHYdon aims to validate the integration of offshore wind, offshore gas and offshore hydrogen in the Dutch North Sea with a green hydrogen (electrolysis) plant on Neptune Energy’s Q13a-A platform. The 1 MW electrolyser can produce up to 400 kg of hydrogen per day. Hydrogen will be blended with natural gas and transported to the shore by pipeline. Q13a-A platform, located approximately 13 km from the coast, was the first fully-electrified platform in the Dutch North Sea. More from PosHYdon and watch the animated video.
Aker Clean Hydrogen and CapeOmega have signed a memorandum of understanding with Norske Shell to develop the Aukra Hydrogen Hub
into a large-scale production facility for clean hydrogen, using
natural gas from the local gas processing plant at Nyhamna. More from
the release.
A.SPIRE and the EU Commission have signed a memorandum of understanding covering the Processes4Planet partnership, part of the Horizon Europe R&D program for research and innovation. The €1.3 billion program targets R&D to ‘transform Europe’s process industries’.
A team of researchers led by the Battelle R&D organization has given a thumbs-up for the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP), ‘paving the way forward for commercial deployment’. Since an initial phase in 2003, MRCSP has undergone multiple small-scale validation pilots that culminated in ‘large-scale development’ in 2008. The focus now is ‘commercialization and expanded regional initiatives’. More from the announcements page.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) has published a new edition, ‘Cycle 2’ of its CO2 Storage Resource Catalogue, covering some 715 CO2 storage sites in 18 countries. CO2 storage capacity is rated against the SPE Storage Resources Management System (SRMS). Some 90 gigatonnes of storage ‘resource’ has been identified within defined projects, a fraction of the 13 teratonnes* of estimated global storage capacity. Of the global total, 4.3% is classed as discovered and less than 0.002% assessed as ‘commercial resource’.
* actually reported as an absurdly precise ‘12,958 gigatonnes’!
OPIS, an IHS Markit company, has launched an expansion to its OPIS Carbon Market Report pricing services. The report covers carbon policies such as cap and trade, low carbon fuel standards, renewable fuel standards and emissions reduction programs.
Tachyus Corp has announced ‘Aurion’, a ‘data physics-driven’ solution to measure a carbon footprint and monitoring critical sources of emissions. Aurion uses OPGEE, Stanford’s oil production greenhouse gas emissions estimator.
Accenture and Microsoft are working with Duke Energy on a ‘first-of-its-kind’ methane-emissions monitoring platform. Methane tracking data will stream into a cloud-hosted platform from satellites, fixed-wing aircraft and ground-level sensors. The Azure data platform was built by the Accenture/Microsoft AI/cloud computing joint venture ‘Avanade’, More from Duke Energy.
EQT Corporation has joined the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, a United Nations’
Environment Program to ‘enhance robust methane emissions monitoring and
credible reporting’. Read The Sniffers’ ‘how to’ guide to the
OGMP2.0.
Mirico’s new Libra provides gas analysis solutions for applications including CCUS. Libra Laser dispersion spectroscopy to measure isotopic gas concentration. In a case study, Libra tracked δ13CO2 isotopic variation in CO2 at plant using the Carbfix process to mineralize atmospheric CO2.
RigCloud’s eponymous drilling emissions reporting solution delivers emissions and performance data to drillers and operators to optimize engine utilization and reduce carbon footprint. The solution is used and endorsed by Nabors Drilling Solutions.
SoCalGas has signed a $12 million deal with Bridger Photonics for use of its gas mapping Lidar solution.
TotalEnergies is partnering with GHGSat to develop a satellite imaging technology to monitor potential methane leak occurrences at offshore facilities. The novel ‘glint mode’ technology uses sun glint on the ocean surface. Images are combined with local measurements made by the CNRS/Total-developed AUSEA1 drone-mounted spectrometer.
Bloom Energy has partnered with MiQ, a non-profit partnership between RMI and SystemIQ, to test and refine the certified gas marketplace. Certified natural gas ‘differentiates gas production across a range of environmental, social and governance practices through a focus on verified methane performance and associated company practices’. Bloom has issued an RFP for certificates representing gas production jointly approved under both the MiQ Standard and the Equitable Origin EO100 standard for responsible energy development. More from Bloom and MiQ.
BP has signed a 15 year deal with CleanBay Renewables to purchase ‘renewable natural gas’ derived from poultry litter, a mixture of manure, feathers and bedding. The fuels will be sold for use in the US transportation sector. More from CleanBay.
The Canadian government has launched a survey of stakeholders, such as labor, non-governmental organizations and industry to provide feedback on potential elements of proposed ‘just transition’ legislation. The results will inform government decision-making and lead to the creation of a Just Transition Advisory Body.
CGG and PGS have signed a memorandum of understanding with a view to
repurposing their seismic multi-client products and technical
capabilities for use in the CCUS industry. The idea is to ‘unlock the
value of existing seismic data for carbon storage evaluation’. More
from the release.
Chevron is expanding its joint venture with Brightmark covering the production and marketing of ‘carbon-negative’ dairy biomethane.
Energi.AI, an ‘AI-driven net zero platform’ launched recently, to ‘unf**k the planet’, removing carbon and accelerating net zero solutions with artificial intelligence. The startup collects data from ERP systems and uses machine learning to develop carbon negative solutions. Energi.AI is a startup out of Norway’s Propell Group, ‘dedicated to building a better world ... by harnessing the power of data’.
The Open Geospatial Consortium is calling for sponsorship to support its Climate Change Services Pilot 2022. The pilot is to accelerate access, fusion and analysis of climate and non-climate data. The pilot will demonstrate the use of climate data in a standards-based process that starts with raw data from satellites and climate change models and produces decision-ready data in support of achieving climate resilience. Sponsorship offers due by December 31st, 2021.
Quidnet Energy and Emissions Reduction Alberta have proposed storing
energy in water underground. With $5 million funding from the
Government of Alberta, the partners are to develop an multi-gigawatt
geologic energy storage resource in Alberta, utilizing Quidnet’s
geomechanical pumped hydro storage technology. GPS stores energy in the
form of water compressed between layers of shale, enabling excess
renewable energy to be stored for extended periods of time and released
when the grid needs power. More from Quidnet.
The University of Houston has announced a CCUS Executive Education Program. The six day distance learning program costs $2,500.
The UK government, Ofgem and Innovate UK have just published a 44 page Energy Digitalization Strategy examining the use of energy data, and how ‘cutting-edge technologies’ can drive decarbonization. These include solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage, heat pumps, electric vehicles and smart appliances. The new publication follows Ofgem’s earlier ‘Smart systems and flexibility plan 2021’ which outlines plans to transition to a ‘smart, flexible, decarbonized energy system’. Ofgem is also funding a new Energy Digitalization Taskforce, led by Laura Sandys and the Energy Systems Catapult.
The UK’s Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) legislation requires large UK companies to report on their annual energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency measures, with optional XBRL reporting. More from SECR.
Boston Consulting Group has become a founding partner of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, to accelerate the development of the ‘climate-smart’ technologies necessary to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
A new study published in Environmental Research Letters finds that half of the IPCC scenarios to limit global warming don’t work, and all require the world to take a wide array of very bold actions. Scenarios include ‘questionably optimistic’ technology deployments and behavioral shifts. Many modeled scenarios rely too much on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Read the EOS summary article and the original paper.
In a similar vein, DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook 2021 warns that ‘electrification is not enough’ to meet the net zero target. Hydrogen could take 20 years and ‘arrive too late to have the impact needed’. The current pace of energy transition is making for a 2.3°C global temperature increase by end of the century. The global pandemic is a ‘lost opportunity’ to speed up the transition as Covid-19 recovery packages are ‘protecting rather than transforming existing industries’.
A paper published in Energies, ‘Through the eye of a needle: an eco-heterodox perspective on the renewable energy transition*’ highlights ‘cracks in the foundation of the mainstream energy transition narrative’. Numerous ‘collectively fatal’ problems are found with ‘so-called’ renewable energy technologies. The pat notion of ‘affordable clean energy’ is blind to the economic, ecological, and social costs. What is required is a ‘contraction of the human enterprise’. ‘Society must embark on a planned, cooperative descent from an extreme state of overshoot in just a decade or two’.
The UK-based IOGP completed a strategic review of industry challenges, finding that while ‘climate change and the energy transition is on top of the agenda’, members ‘want IOGP to stand up and speak for our industry more’, and further its advocacy work. A new Energy Transition Directorate is to be created, led by Energy Transition Director, Concetto Fischetti. More from IOGP.
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