Point Sensor Networks Struggle to Detect and Quantify Short Controlled Releases at Oil and Gas Sites

14 February 2024, Version 2
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

This study evaluated multiple commercially available continuous monitoring (CM) point sensor network (PSN) solutions under single-blind controlled release testing conducted at operational upstream and midstream oil and natural gas (O&G) sites. During releases, PSNs reported site-level emission rate estimates of 0 kg/h between 38-86% of the time. When non-zero site-level emission rate estimates were provided, no linear correlation between release rate and reported emission rate estimate was observed. The average, aggregated across all PSN solutions during releases, shows 5% of mixing ratio readings at downwind sensors were greater than the site's baseline plus two standard deviations. Four of six total PSN solutions tested during this field campaign provided site-level emission rate estimates with the site average relative error ranging from -100% to 24% for solution D, -100% to -43% for solution E, -25% for solution F (solution F was only at one site), and -99% to 430% for solution G, with an overall average of -29% across all sites and solutions. Of all the individual site-level emission rate estimates, only 11% were within +/- 2.5 kg/h of the study team's best estimate of site-level emissions at the time of the releases.

Keywords

Methane
emissions abatement
continuous monitoring
emissions quantification
oil and gas
GHG
Green House Gas

Supplementary materials

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Title
Point Sensor Networks Struggle to Detect and Quantify Short Controlled Releases at Oil and Gas Sites - Supplementary Information
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The document contains relevant additional and supplementary information that was not captured nor discussed in the main paper.
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