Environment
With millions of wells having been drilled in the US since the beginning of the oil age, the land is pocked with old, unused wellbores. For most, repurposing is a pipe dream. Plugging is the best option.
This guest editorial examines how the most commonly used and cited methane emissions metric can create a misleading picture of upstream gas-handling performance for both the public and industry professionals.
Spain has granted permits covering a swath of the mountain range to Mantle8 for natural hydrogen and helium exploration a month after France granted the company similar permits.
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North Sea oil and gas production was up but greenhouse gas emissions in 2016 were down against 2015 performance, according to Oil & Gas UK’s Environment Report. -
At the State Council on 17 January, Ola Elvestuen was appointed as minister of climate and environment. Elvestuen is a member of parliament and represents Oslo. He was first elected to parliament in 2013 and has been deputy leader of the Liberal Party since 2008.
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A US-government-sponsored program is putting new methane leak detection systems to the test with a goal of achieving functionality costs of $3,000/year/wellsite while hitting stringent performance criteria.
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Wärtsilä plans to develop a harbor tug design to maximize ecological operational sustainability to be used a new port facility being built in the Brazilian city of São Mateus, which will have environmental demands among the most stringent in the world.
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Belize, home of the largest barrier reef in the western hemisphere, has permanently suspended oil operations in its ocean waters.
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Weights used in the original construction of TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline in South Dakota were identified as a preliminary cause of the failure that resulted in a 210,000-gal spill in November.
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Congress is close to lifting a 40-year-old ban on energy development in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but drilling for oil in that frozen wilderness may still be years away as the effort faces exhaustive environmental reviews and likely lawsuits.
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Public perceptions matter. The industry needs to take a proactive and solution-centric position with respect to the Paris Agreement and join the battle for the clean and affordable kilowatts of energy the markets will increasingly favor.
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On 23 May 2017,the Ukrainian parliament adopted the Law of Ukraine "On Environment Impact Assessment." The newly adopted law requires mandatory assessment of effect on the environment of certain industrial objects and activities.
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said in his first testimony before Congress on 7 December that he plans to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, instead of just killing it outright.
