Mapping Fugitive Gas Emission Sources and Severity Across Southeastern Saskatchewan

Abstract:

Southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada contains a 10,000 km² region heavily developed by oil and gas activity that has been struggling with air quality issues, arising from hundreds or thousands of oil and gas leak points. The region is also very diverse in terms of oilfield operators, who use extraction techniques including conventional, enhanced oil recovery (EOR), and fracking. As regulators and operators need more knowledge about emission patterns locally, we undertook comprehensive mapping and characterization of leak sources at the regional scale using vehicle-based data collection, together with computational techniques. We measured the presence and source of fugitive emissions from infrastructure and oilfield activities in eight 100 km² survey domains. These included two controls with no oil and gas activity, and otherwise the domains were selected to capture the diversity of development; targeting primarily conventional and EOR activities in the Weyburn-Midale beds, and unconventional activities in the Bakken play. A total of 25 unique operators fell within the survey domains. Each domain was surveyed multiple times for CO₂, CH₄, and H₂S, allowing us to identify persistent leaks and to screen out one-time events. The multiple gas targets also provided opportunities for discriminating one type of fugitive emission from another (i.e. flares from storage tanks) using ratios of excess (above ambient) concentrations, after correcting for natural background variability with a signal-processing routine. Fugitive emissions were commonly observed in all study domains. Most emissions were associated with oil and gas infrastructure, as opposed to drilling and other short-term activities. There were obvious emissions at many well pads, storage tanks, and flares. We also observed high geochemical variability around flares, with some being very effective in combusting toxic gases, and others less so. Almost all observed concentrations fell below regulatory limits, but have a cumulative impact in this region of high oilfield density. The low-level leaks are potentially also indicative of localized and/or future problems, which may be of interest to local operators.