Five percent of the world’s gas supply is wasted by being flared or vented into the atmosphere, leading to a huge loss of potential revenue, not to mention a significant impact on the environment. This is equivalent to 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year and the release of 400 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
The industry does this for a variety of valid reasons, including well testing, emergencies, commissioning, maintenance, or simply because an economic solution for capturing and using the gas has not been discovered. Capture of flared gas, therefore, presents an economic and environmentally beneficial opportunity to create new value chains that can benefit not only the industry but also people’s quality of life.
This extended abstract draws on a recent DNV GL project to assess existing and future technologies and concepts for capturing small volumes of associated gas that are normally flared from oil fields, both onshore and offshore. The following four technology options that can be used to capture associated gas, convert it, and either utilise the product onsite or transport it to market for consumption are considered.
Using more cost-effective ways of transporting natural gas where there is no existing pipeline.
Converting gas into products with a higher economic value through chemical processes.
Novel concepts—bringing the solution closer to the source of gas flaring.
Other solutions.
The extended abstract then focuses on cost-effective ways of transporting gas, in particular the use of micro-LNG solutions
Direct cryopreservation of poultry/avian embryonic reproductive cells: A low-tech, cost-effective and efficient method for safeguarding genetic diversity
