bp, Baker Hughes Announce Breakthrough in Flaring Emissions with Methane Abatement Technology

In collaboration with Baker Hughes, bp was able to collect methane emissions data from its flaring operations by using Baker Hughes’ flare.IQ abatement units at 65 flares. bp intends to use this data to conduct early interventions and reduce emissions from methane flaring.

“bp’s transformation is underway, turning strategy into action through delivery of our targets and aims. We don’t have all the answers, and we certainly can’t do this on our own,” said Fawaz Bitar, bp senior vice president of Health Safety Environment & Carbon. “Through our long-standing partnership with Baker Hughes, we have progressed technology and implemented methane quantification for oil and gas flares, helping us to achieve the first milestone of our Aim 4. We continue to look at opportunities like this, where we can collaborate across the industry to find solutions to our biggest challenges.”

The flare.IQ unit advances ultrasonic flare metering technology and is part of Baker Hughes’ Panametrics product portfolio. The analytics platform allows operators to gather data from flare systems, such as temperature, pressure, vent gas velocities, and gas composition. A complete view of these metrics assists operators in maximizing combustion efficiency and reducing methane emissions. Emissions reporting is enhanced by flare.IQ’s presentation of real-time measurement, and it is also OGMP 2.0 level 4 compliant.

flare.IQ methane abatement unit; Image Credits: Baker Hughes

“Our collaboration with bp is an important landmark and a further illustration that technology is a key enabler for addressing the energy trilemma of security, sustainability and affordability,” said Ganesh Ramaswamy, Executive Vice President of Industrial & Energy Technology at Baker Hughes. “As a leader in developing climate technology solutions, such as our flare.IQ emissions monitoring and abatement technology, cooperation like the one we have with bp are key to testing and validating in the field solutions that can enable operators to achieve emissions reduction goals efficiently and economically.”

bp and Baker Hughes began a full-scale study of flare combustion in 2020, testing a variety of flares in difficult conditions and examining the accuracy of flare.IQ technology. The first trial took place on a floating production, storage, and offloading facility in the North Atlantic Ocean. Test results showed significantly high combustion performance standards above 99%, verifying that the flare.IQ platform provides accurate flare measurements for operators to make necessary intervention.

“There’s confidence for the operators on the vessel that as they get this feedback from flare.IQ, they can see how the flare is performing,” said Peter Evans, Senior Engineer, bp. “And if there is a change in performance because a component needs maintenance, or environmental conditions are putting extra stresses on the flare, they can act and make any necessary interventions right there, right then.”

The upstream sector of the oil and gas industry is responsible for the largest portion of methane leakage, but, according to Myth Busters Klaus Brun and Rainer Kurz, there are a number of ways to identify and prevent leakage. In Myth: Methane Leakage Cannot Be Avoided, the Myth Busters reveal that venting, leakage, and gas gathering compression are the three primary sources of upstream methane emissions. Leakage and venting are often accidental or safety related, so improved operations practices can mitigate these sources. The duo also discusses methane leakage in an episode of the TurboTime podcast.