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Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Ltd. (NNPC Ltd.) is designing a methane abatement project in collaboration with the United States Department of State and Deloitte, the national oil and gas company has said.
The three partners held a three-day technical workshop on methane reduction and decarbonization in Abuja. “The workshop, which is a follow-up on the July 2023 capacity building Training on Methane Baselining and Organizational Design and the Development of a Methane Technology Evaluation Framework, is aimed at defining the critical success elements for the Methane Abatement Pilot Project Implementation, Scaling and Financing”, NNPC said in a recent news release. “Some of the critical elements of the project tabled at the workshop include determining the scope of the project, establishing a baseline for methane and carbon emissions from the selected operation sites, collecting relevant data on the selected sites and helping the Deloitte consultants to understand the operations and expectations of NNPC Ltd”.
Oil Mining Lease (OML) 34, operated by NNPC with a 55 percent stake, has been chosen as the test site for the methane control project. The 950-square-kilometer (366.8 miles) block onshore Niger Delta has three producing fields—Ughelli East, Ughelli West and Utorogu, according to 45 percent leaseholder ND Western Ltd. The fields have a combined production of about 390 million cubic feet of gas a day and 17,000 barrels of oil and condensate per day, ND Western says on its website. A fourth field, the previously producing Warri River, is expected to return to production, ND Western says.
Global Methane Pledge
The workshop drew participants “from relevant NNPC Ltd.’s subsidiaries and Departments such as Exploration & Production; New Energy; Gas Infrastructure; Health, Safety, and Environment, as well as the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, and Federal Government agencies like the National Council on Climate Change”, the press release stated.
The US Bureau of Energy Resources, an office under the State Department, is sponsoring technical training under the methane abatement project through the bureau’s Energy and Mineral Governance Program, NNPC said.
Washington and Abuja are signatories to the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative launched at COP26 in 2021 that has set a global goal of cutting methane emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030 relative to 2020 levels.
Methane from energy supply, primarily fugitive emissions from the production and the transport of fossil fuels, accounted for around 18 percent, or as much as 23 percent, of global greenhouse gas emissions from energy supply in 2019, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment report on global climate progress. Energy supplyattributable methane accounted for approximately 32 percent, or as high as 42 percent, of overall methane emissions and six percent of Earth-warming gas emissions in 2019, according to the report by the United Nations body published 2022.
“Rapidly reducing methane emissions is complementary to action on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and is regarded as the single most effective strategy to reduce global warming in the near term and keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach”, stated a US-European Union statement announcing the Global Methane Pledge.
“Countries have widely varying methane emissions profiles and reduction potential, but all can contribute to achieving the collective global goal through additional domestic methane reduction and international cooperative actions”, said the statement September 18, 2021. “Major sources of methane emissions include oil and gas, coal, agriculture, and landfills. These sectors have different starting points and varying potential for short-term methane abatement with the greatest potential for targeted mitigation by 2030 in the energy sector”.
Besides the 30 percent decadal reduction target, countries that have acceded to the pledge agree to use “best available inventory methodologies to quantify methane emissions”, according to the statement.
Nigeria-TotalEnergies Collaboration
Before the cooperation with the US and Deloitte, NNPC inked an agreement with TotalEnergies SE on methane detection and monitoring targeting oil and gas facilities in Nigeria.
Under the deal announced by TotalEnergies December 18, the French energy giant will share its drone-based innovation AUSEA with NNPC. Launched 2017, AUSEA consists of a dual sensor capable of detecting methane and carbon dioxide emissions and identifying their source, according to TotalEnergies.
To contact the author, email jov.onsat@rigzone.com
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