METEC Testing Protocol Developments and International Collaborations
Background and Objective
The Global Character of Oil and Gas:
- While oil has always been an internationally traded commodity, LNG has made international sales of natural gas much more prevalent.
- Buyers of natural gas are interested in the emissions intensity of purchased product.
- To support buyer demand, emission reporting has ‘gone global’ in recent years. Many companies support voluntary reporting programs like OGMP 2.0, MiQ, Veritas, and others.
Advanced Emission Detection is Now Integral to Reporting
- Unlike traditional regulatory programs, most voluntary programs require some form of measurement informed inventory to validate emissions.
- Measurements (estimates of emission rates) require use of new, advanced, emission detection and quantification solutions.
- Testing is necessary to understanding method performance.
Why International Cooperation?
- Global transactions require international trust in underlying methods.
- Multiple test centers, using the same protocol, is the best way to encourage recognition of testing … and identification of quality advanced methods.
Who and Why?
TotalEnergies’ TADI test site and METEC – the groups with the most hands-on test experience – cooperated to revise the ADED protocols, released in February 2025.
Multiple Test Centers Encourages Testing & Equipment Diversity
Test results depend upon:
- Environmental conditions
- Equipment types and configurations
- Realism of the test facilities gas releases
- Performance of the solution, given the above variables.
- International cooperation provides more diversity on all these variables, while also exposing test results to a wider audience.
Testing Uses the New, Updated, ADED 2.0 Protocol
New protocol:
- Testing includes
- Simulated “baseline” emissions for normal operational processes at a facility – venting, combustion slip, etc. (top figure)
- Simulated failure conditions, leaks, process failures and similar fugitive emissions (middle plot)
- Test center and solution data are assessed against a solution-specified detection threshold for solutions that report the required data
- Data classified into True Positives, True Negatives, False Positives, and False Negatives using a fast, uniform, time step (bottom plot)
- Metrics are time-weighted with no defined start and stop of experiments
Testable Interfaces:
- TI 1 compares solution estimates, such as start and end times, and emission rate, to the actual/test center data, in this case, actual start and end times and emission rates.
- TI 2 is an analysis interface for solutions that report solution-specific detection thresholds and threshold durations that can be used to assess test center and solution data (the figure).
The Protocol Development Partners
METEC Facility at Colorado State University
- On-shore equipment from temperate zone north American production basins.
- Dedicated facility, simulates most release types
- Continuous operation
Total Energies’ Anomalies Detection Initiatives (TADI)
- TADI is in Lacq, France
- Includes large equipment characteristic of offshore or large conventional developments.
- Dedicated facility, simulates range of release types including very large rates
- Intermittent operation
Emerging Facilities
Petronas SEA METEC, in Cooperation with JOGMEC (Under development)
- Located at Institut Teknologi Petroleum PETRONAS (INSTEP) in Kuala Terrenganu, Malaysia
- Development partnership with Japanese Organization for Metals and Energy Security
- Equipment characteristic of offshore production platform
- In tropical location
- Continuously operating training center but test operations will be intermittent
Canadian Test Centers
- Two facilities … different equipment, different funding sources
- Tourmaline Test Facility – The West Wolf Lake Gas Plant, co-owned by Tourmaline and Rubellite Energy
- AMEP – Limited scale METEC-like test facility. Managed by Carbon Management Canada and the Sundre Petroleum Operators Group
- Equipment characteristic northern tier equipment – enclosed equipment
- Protocol use:
- Tourmaline using protocol for first time fall 2025
- AMEP has reviewed protocol but not implemented it
Contact
The protocol development efforts depend on active stakeholder engagement to remain relevant. Please reach out if you have ideas for site improvement, expanded testing capabilities or would like to utilize the protocols for your testing needs.
Dan Zimmerle | Director, METEC | [email protected]
Ezra Levin | Research Scientist, METEC | [email protected]
