SeekOps, Science team. SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, 2024.
Methane Destruction Removal Efficiency Assessment in US Shale Basins Using UAV-Based TDLAS Measurements
Flares are meant to burn methane into carbon dioxide, which is far less potent as a greenhouse gas. How completely they do it, their destruction removal efficiency, is assumed in inventories far more often than it is measured. This study measured it: drones carrying tunable diode laser absorption spectrometers, the same instrument family that flew on the Mars Curiosity rover, sampled the plumes of working flares across two major shale basins in the United States. The result is a field measurement of how much methane flares actually let through, at the scale of an operating program rather than a single site.
What was measured
The campaign covered 42 flare systems across 71 observations in the Bakken and Permian basins, including 27 revisits, made where a first measurement was flagged, which let the same source be compared across time. Each observation is a drone survey with a laser spectrometer, an anemometer, and RTK positioning, from which the methane leaving the flare is quantified by mass balance and plume modeling.
What it feeds
The measurements informed operators' leak detection and repair programs and reporting aligned with OGMP 2.0 and EPA inventory standards. The paper was presented at SPE ATCE 2024 in New Orleans as SPE-221067-MS, with Matt Duyst as first author.
Notes
The paper is published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and is available through OnePetro at the link above. Survey data are not public and are not shown here.