Tougher environmental regulations, rising operating costs and new rules expected under the Kyoto accord are driving oil and gas industry demand for “green” technologies, said exhibitors at this year’s GO-EXPO show.
Environmental technologies featured prominently at the three-day Gas and Oil Exposition, which concluded last week at the Stampede Round-up Centre in Calgary.
Technologies included solar power generation, well-blowout prevention, well cleanup, gas flaring and venting reduction, water recycling, environmentally friendly seismic line cutting, and environmental data-management software.
“A lot of clients are looking to get into renewable technologies, and for remote locations it makes sense because it’s economical,” said Stuart Torr, an environmental engineer with Komex Inter- national Ltd. in Calgary.
The consulting firm is expanding its use of solar and wind energy at remote oilfield sites, to supply power for projects that include cleaning up contaminated groundwater and soil.
Rising costs for conventional electricity, natural gas and diesel fuel for generators have made alternative energy sources an economical option, Torr said. “We’re finding that solar or wind is extremely competitive to any of these standard traditional technologies.”
Komex has installed six “quite large” solar systems, each generating up to a kilowatt of electricity, to power cleanup projects at remote oilpatch locations, he said.
The company is also investigating the use of solar panels to run pumps on individual oil wells that are no longer economic to operate using conventional power sources.
Oilpatch demand for solar power is rising steadily, said Mark Fournier, Canadian sales manager for DC Power Corp.
The Calgary-based firm is a distributor for Sharp Electronics Corporation, the world’s leading manufacturer of solar electric panels.
Oil and gas companies are using solar to power remote telemetry equipment and run automatic SCADA (System Control And Data Acquisition) systems, Fournier said.
A 1,000-watt solar panel used in the industry costs about $1,000 and most typical applications require one or two panels, which is “way less money” than a diesel-fuelled generator for small operations, he said.
On the well-drilling side of the industry, Katch Kan Limited of Edmonton showcased its secondary blowout prevention system.
It is designed to control a “kick,” where a buildup of high pressure far down the well causes drilling fluids to shoot back up the hole and out of the well – usually triggering a blowout and contaminating the well lease.
Under high pressure, the fluids can blow out heavy steel bushings in the rotary table just beneath the rig floor where the workers are, said Quinn Holtby, a former driller and president and CEO of Katch Kan. “They come blasting out of the drill floor and they can kill people.”
Katch Kan’s system strips drilling fluids coming up the hole off the drill pipe, reducing the pressure by redirecting the fluids into a sealed containment unit.
This unit then recirculates the fluids into tanks so they can be pumped back down the well to control the kick.
“The system should be used on every sour-gas well in Canada as a secondary backup system to prevent a serious blowout,” Holtby said.
For wells already in production, DPS Microbial Solutions of Calgary displayed an environmentally friendly biotechnology system for keeping wells flowing while preventing equipment corrosion and sour-gas contamination.
The system, developed by BioConcepts Inc. of Houston, uses naturally occurring, specially “reared” bacteria that are pumped downhole to remove scale buildup that slows the flow of oil and gas into the well.
The bacteria also consume any oxygen in the well, preventing corrosion of equipment through oxidation. They squeeze out anerobic bacteria (which don’t need oxygen to survive) that produce toxic hydrogen sulphide, which can turn a “sweet” well “sour.”
Mathew Jones, director of marketing for DPS Microbial Solutions, said BioConcepts’ bacteria eliminate the need to pump corrosive chemicals or hot oil down the well to break up scale and boost production. “We extend equipment life and reduce overall maintenance costs.”
Air quality is another big concern for the oil and gas industry, especially with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under Kyoto.
EnviroDrive Inc. of Red Deer has developed a unit that stops the flaring and venting of gas.
Used on wellsites where power is unavailable, the unit operates on the differential gas pressure in a high-pressure, natural-gas production system to drive pumps that inject methanol and other treatment chemicals into the system. At the same time, the unit sends the gas on which it runs into the sales pipeline, eliminating any release to the atmosphere.
EnviroDrive’s units, which can handle high concentrations of sour gas, also end environmental and safety concerns due to gas escaping at the wellsite.
The revenue that companies make from capturing and selling otherwise wasted gas typically pays for the cost of the unit within six months, said Tim Forest of EnviroDrive.
“Everybody’s trying to reduce emissions,” he added. “The oil companies are making an effort on their own to look at the alternatives.”
Pittsburgh-based Aquatech International Corporation plans to open a Calgary sales office because of oilpatch demand for environmental technologies.
Karin Brightwell, who works in Aquatech’s business development and marketing branch, said the company sees lots of potential in Alberta for its industrial water and wastewater treatment technologies.
Oil and gas companies face increasing regulatory and public pressure to reduce or eliminate their use of fresh surface water and groundwater in oil recovery and oilsands operations.
Aquatech licences HERO, or high-efficiency reverse osmosis technology, that is specifically designed to purify and recycle difficult-to-treat water in large industrial operations.
“It holds a lot of potential,” Brightwell said, especially for steam-assisted gravity drainage projects used to heat bitumen and pull it out of the ground.
Komex’s Torr predicts the oilpatch’s use of renewable energy sources and other green technologies will keep increasing in the future.
“I think companies are turning towards being energy companies, no longer oil and gas necessarily,” he said. “They’re looking at the whole range in trying to bring renewables into their portfolio.”
