New Data Standards Emerge as Greenhouse Gasses Hit Their Highest Levels

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The average rate of methane emissions in the Permian Basin has doubled, according to data published in the journal Science Advances that can be viewed on the interactive PermianMAP. 

How do we have this emissions data? Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund, which manages the PermianMAP, are using satellites to observe and report greenhouse gas emissions.

“These are the highest emissions ever measured from a major U.S. oil and gas basin. There’s so much methane escaping from Permian oil and gas operations that it nearly triples the 20-year climate impact of burning the gas they’re producing,” Dr. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at EDF, said while describing data collected between May 2018 and March 2019.

Big oil companies—including ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell—want stricter limits on methane to help the industry’s reputation. Project Canary, a Denver-based firm, is working to collect and openly share international ESG data. 

“What this market needs is trusted independent data,” Project Canary CEO Chris Romer said. “We plan to be the Moody’s or S&P of carbon economics … energy markets need radical transparency on carbon economics because there is a hard cap on how much carbon we can put in the air.”

Project Canary isn’t alone in working toward independent, standardized emissions data. PIDX, an association for digital business standards in oil and gas, is working to develop data standards for greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas production.

The project is being led within PIDX by Sebastian Gass (a great last name for the industry), global head of digital transformation strategy at Chevron, which has also contracted with Project Canary. 

Currently, gathering emissions data for internal and external reporting is a major administrative and data management challenge, involving tedious and time-consuming manual work. Gass envisions a standard digital process for gathering and sharing emission data.

Chevron, with Gass at the helm, wants to find ways to streamline the data collection and curation process in order to make data more available on a daily basis so it can be incorporated into production meetings, and support the decision-making process.

It’s starting with two projects—the Gorgon natural gas plant in Australia and the El Segundo refinery in Los Angeles—and using emissions reporting and analysis software from Sphera.

Gass is keen to look at the whole data architecture around data and perhaps find ways to apply data science and AI. Chevron has a team of data scientists and data engineers, working with partners at IBM and Microsoft, to explore ways that data science and AI can “help Chevron improve environment performance,” said Franz Helin, IT project manager at Chevron.

Chevron doesn’t want the initiatives to stop at its company walls. The goal of the PIDX project is to develop standards for data exchange related to carbon emissions and other areas related to energy transition.

The team wants to leverage the PIDX framework to develop clear data standards and understand data exchange needs for suppliers, operators, and networks. The system would improve clarity about the energy standards for different parts of the world. The reporting would be more transparent. There would be better alignment between operators and suppliers about what data is needed.

Data standardization would help oil and gas companies understand their environmental impact, better report ESG performance, more easily meet compliance data requirements, and more. 

The end goal here is to help the industry be more transparent—almost as transparent as greenhouse gasses themselves.