Tackling Oil & Gas Emissions

Substantial efforts are underway in the U.S. and abroad to mitigate climate change by reducing the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This involves cutting greenhouse gases from main sources such as power plants, factories, cars, and farms. Forests, oceans, and soil also absorb and store these gases, and are an important part of the solution.

In the U.S., carbon dioxide and methane accounted for over 90 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. However, when compared to carbon dioxide, methane has more than 80 times the global warming potential over a 20-year period. Thus, reducing methane emissions in the near term can have significant impacts in reducing global warming. 

Key efforts include the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment by 150 countries to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030; and the U.S. enforcement of strong regulations included in the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

“Every step of the oil and gas supply chain has the potential to emit methane,” said Arvind Ravikumar, a faculty member in the UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering and an expert in the field.

The oil and gas supply chain is the primary way to cost-effectively reduce methane emissions. Methane emissions occur during production, refinement and processing, pipeline transportation, power plant use, and shipment of methane in liquified form to other countries.

In parallel, there has been a significant expansion in the last decade in technologies that help detect and fix emissions. Advancements in satellites, aerial and drone-based systems, and continuous monitoring systems have made the challenge of finding methane emissions faster and more cost-effective.

With all this new data, the need for interpreting measurements on methane emissions has taken on new urgency.

To address this issue, in 2023 UT Austin announced that it will be home to a new multidisciplinary research and education initiative based in the Cockrell School of Engineering. The Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL) will address the growing need for accurate, timely, and clear accounting of greenhouse gas emissions across global oil and natural gas supply chains. 

"We need TACC to manage terabytes of data daily and to use their supercomputing resources to analyze data and interpret them to provide useful information that can assist operations in reducing emissions in a timely manner. TACC’s HPC resources are critical for this analysis."

Data and analyses from this endeavor will help both public and private institutions develop climate strategies and actions informed by accurate, transparent, and timely data and tools that identify opportunities for emissions reductions.

“People are finding it hard to integrate and interpret the data,” said Ravikumar, who co-leads the new lab alongside David Allen, the Melvin H. Gertz Regents Chair in Chemical Engineering at the Cockrell School. “EEMDL is developing models and tools that help interpret the data that’s coming in to provide useful information.” 

As part of EEMDL, UT Austin is partnering with The Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University to run an affiliate program that will foster strategic partnerships with additional global universities and research organizations. Collectively, the three institutions have conducted methane emissions measurements at thousands of sites and published dozens of peer-reviewed studies.

TACC’s UTRC Resources Critical to Analysis

“To make sense of the large data sets, we need access to computing resources, modeling capabilities, and data system management — TACC is an expert in these areas at UT Austin and around the country,” Ravikumar said. 

Currently, EEMDL researchers are using TACC’s Lonestar6 and Corral systems for data storage and data system management through The University of Texas Research Cyber­infra­structure (UTRC). This CI enables researchers within all 14 UT System institutions to collaborate with each other and compete at the forefront of science and discovery.

The researchers are using the Fugitive Emissions Abatement Simulation Toolkit (FEAST), a computational model that employs statistical and numerical methodologies to assess the efficacy of diverse leak detection and repair programs. The researchers leverage Lonestar6, which enhances the speed and efficiency of their simulations and optimizes their workflows.

Furthermore, driven by a surge in interest from regulatory bodies and industry professionals, there is an imperative need for a streamlined, standardized, and user-friendly platform. To fulfill this objective, EEMDL is engaged with TACC in the establishment of a user-centric platform, intricately integrated with the capabilities of Lonestar6. This platform provides seamless access to the latest iteration of FEAST, catering to diverse users from different areas of science.

A real-world use of how EEMDL is relying on TACC is through continuous monitoring systems, which are sensors analogous to smoke detectors. The systems are installed at oil and gas assets around the world to detect methane. An example closer to home for Texans is in the Permian Basin of Odessa, Texas. There are over 150,000 oil and gas sites in the Permian Basin. Each site has up to four sensors that detect gas emissions. That is a total of up to 600,000 sensors that detect methane every few seconds, providing detailed emissions data. 

“As you can see, we are quickly running into very large data sets,” Ravikumar said. “We need TACC to manage terabytes of data daily and to use their supercomputing resources to analyze data and interpret them to provide useful information that can assist operations in reducing emissions in a timely manner. HPC resources are critical for this analysis. We are happy to partner with TACC.”