Environmental Partnership takes action to improve operations

Since its launch in late 2017, The Environmental Partnership has more than doubled in size and worked to address and reduce methane and VOC emissions throughout the U.S. The Environmental Partnership is an industry-led, voluntary program made up of oil and natural gas companies operating in every major oil and gas basin across the U.S. Each participating company has committed to the program's mission: to continuously improve the industry's environmental performance, initially focusing on further reducing methane and VOC emissions from operations.

The program is doing so by taking field actions to address the highest sources of these emissions, fostering information-sharing within the industry, and promoting collaboration with academic researchers, regulators, new technology developers and more, explained Program Director Matthew Todd.

"We've taken every opportunity to make this program widely accessible to industry, and I think its growth demonstrates we have a recipe for success," Todd said. "Across industry, the companies are making tremendous investments in both capital and workforce to improve operations and minimize their environmental footprint."

As a follow-up to BIC Magazine's April 2018 article introducing the program, here are some updates on the successes of the program in its nearly two years of work:

• The Environmental Partnership began with 26 companies, but has since reached 66 member companies. Last year, the program was implemented in 18 of the top 21 producing states, and 32 of the 58 companies participating in 2018 were among the top 40 largest natural gas companies operating in the U.S.
• The Environmental Partnership released its first annual report in July, which documents the efforts of the 58 companies that participated in 2018. Specifically, the partnership developed three programs to address the primary VOC and methane emission sources as identified by EPA data: equipment leaks, pneumatic control devices and leaks that may occur when excess liquids are unloaded from a natural gas well.
• For the leak repair program, companies demonstrated a leak occurrence rate of just 0.16 percent, and 99 percent of these leaks were repaired within 60 days. The companies inspected over 56 million components during more than 156,000 surveys across more than 78,000 production sites, representing hundreds of thousands of oil and natural gas wells across the U.S.
• For the pneumatic controller program, companies replaced, retrofitted or removed from service more than 3,000 high-bleed pneumatic controllers in 2018. This was in addition to more than 28,000 controllers already replaced by participants prior to 2018. Also, 38 of the participating companies have completely removed these controllers from operations.
• More than 132,000 manual liquids unloading events were monitored in 2018. This type of monitoring makes an impact in ensuring natural gas and methane are not unnecessarily released into the atmosphere.

"We simply could not have accomplished what we did in our first year without their contributions, and it's their commitment that is making the difference," Todd said.

Todd remains confident the release of the report demonstrates the industry's commitment to reducing emissions and is hopeful the results will bring more industry participation to this important coalition.

"The Environmental Partnership is purposely designed to evolve as we learn from the program's implementation and determine whether there are additional opportunities to address other sources of air emissions or other environmental issues," he said.

"Going forward, we'll continue to focus on accomplishing the three principles of the program: learning, collaborating and taking action."

For more information about The Environmental Partnership and to read the report, visit https://theenvironmentalpartnership.org/2019-annual-report.