The keys to emissions management
The Regulator 2022 - Issue 2
In the rapidly developing space of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions management in the offshore petroleum industry, NOPSEMA has observed innovation and responsiveness from titleholders in reducing the emissions footprints of their activities.
While large scale emissions reduction projects such as battery storage installation can require significant resources, emissions reduction can also be achieved through incremental operational improvements and involving the expertise of the offshore workforce.
At a recent offshore inspection, NOPSEMA identified several opportunities to improve GHG emissions management. One observation from inspectors was that many of the staff had ideas for reducing energy use and emissions from offshore plant and equipment, but mechanisms for raising these ideas up for evaluation were not widely or frequently used.
As a result, the titleholder used their existing safe card reporting system to add some emissions related categories to encourage ideas. With every onboard employee submitting a safe card every day, the system is a highly accessible and adaptable method for requesting input from the workforce. The titleholder also implemented a weekly award for the best emissions-reduction idea and the suggestions are collected in a database where they are formally evaluated.
The system has also been rolled out on a second facility managed by the titleholder. Another inspection finding identified that a key piece of equipment (a low-pressure compressor) being out of service was significantly increasing the emissions from the facility.
This finding had also been identified by the titleholder, and a path to rectification had been established, but the inspectors observed that there may be opportunities to accelerate the return to service and therefore decrease emissions. The titleholder investigated and found opportunity to reduce the timeline, with the compressor returning to service roughly two months earlier than originally planned and reducing emissions back down to baseline levels.
While every activity’s footprint is different, NOPSEMA encourages innovation and proactiveness as displayed in the examples above to continue to reduce energy use and GHG emissions throughout the activity life.