The Canada Energy Regulator (CER) has released new pipeline
information including interactive maps, enhanced safety and
environmental information and a new webpage covering pipeline flows and
capacity. The latest updates profile 26 pipelines, some 92% of the line
kilometers that the CER regulates. Visit the CER’s interactive pipeline map.
New proposed regulations from the EPA require the elimination of gas pneumatic devices across US oil and gas operations. According to the OGCI, ‘over a million venting pneumatic devices will need to be replaced or supplied with compressed air over the coming years’. A recent OGCI webinar describes a potential replacement technology from Qnergy.
Comment – one advantage of pneumatic devices over more sophisticated solutions is that the former do not need electricity to operate. A possible advantage in off-grid applications or during a power outage.
The State of New Mexico has approved Flogistix’s Sniffer 4Dv2 methane sniffing technology as a component of its ‘Alarm’ advanced leak and repair monitoring program. The Sniffer flies on a DJI Matrice 300 drone and captures geo-referenced and time-stamped gas and particle concentrations.
The Texas Railroad Commission has teamed with the Public Utilities Commission on a natural gas supply chain map. The map fulfills the Senate Bill 3 requirements and will be used by the Texas Division of Emergency Management to provide the State’s emergency response.
In a separate development, the RRC was recently onboarded to the Texas Open Data Portal, a repository for publicly-accessible open data published by state agencies and higher education institutions. Historical oil and gas production data dating back to 1931 is available from the Portal.
Following a November 2022 5.4 magnitude earthquake in Reeves County, TX, the RRC
is revising its seismicity reduction response plan. The plan sets
curtailments on the injection volumes of produced water into disposal
wells. The target for reducing daily injection volumes in deep disposal
wells has been lowered from 298,000 to 162,000 bopd. In parallel the
RRC’s has embarked on an underground injection control program that is
to use artificial intelligence to review seismicity in
injection/disposal wells. The AI program is a joint venture with the
Ground Water Protection Council. More on the initiative in this video.
The US Cloud Act and a potential dependency of the EU on US cloud
providers has sparked off a reaction in the form of EU-based clouds
such as GAIA-X and the German Bundescloud.
But, as users of Microsoft’s OneDrive know, selecting a cloud other
than Azure can be difficult. The situation, representing an ‘epic
battle between Microsoft and the EU’ was described in a video presentation by NextCloud’s Frank Karlitschek.
The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) is seeking views from oil and gas and carbon storage industries on information and sample-related matters in CO2 appraisal and storage, to evaluate new data powers in support of energy security and the transition to net zero. The consultation concerns future NSTA requirements for CCS data retention, reporting and disclosure of carbon storage activities. More in the consultation document. The NSTA’s Offshore Energy Digital Strategy Group is calling for individuals and organizations to join its ‘task groups’ to study data principles, cross-sector digitalization and other worthy activities.
NSTA and the Global Underwater Hub, a trade body, report that upcoming oil and gas projects represent a ‘golden opportunity’ for UK’s offshore energy supply chain. Seven near-term projects will require 30 new wells and 194 kilometers of new pipeline. Vessel and rigs will be required for some 5,000 vessel-days and 2,500 rig-days.
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