"There's a growing concern among investors that the oil and gas industry is making very big bets on natural gas as sort of the foundation for its long-term growth,'' said Andrew Logan, senior director of oil and gas at Ceres, a shareholder advocacy organization focused on sustainability issues. Logan said methane leakage had gone under the radar, but now investors are cognizant of the problem.
The drone-mounted leak-detection technologies for continuous measurement of methane will range from the North Sea to the West Texas Permian Basin to the company's giant natural gas Khazzan field in Oman. BP is already using the technology in Khazzan and will soon retrofit facilities in Trinidad and Sangachal and on all future projects.
BP indicated it is willing to share the practices it has developed to use in conjunction with the drone and imaging technology with other oil and gas companies. "We would love for others to also adopt the same technology," Watson said, though the technology itself would need to be licenses from BP's individual tech vendors. BP does provide information on its best practices to industry groups, such as the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and Oil and Gas Technology Centre.
May be? They're 'cutting through all of the red tape.' There's no maybe here.