Getting the chemistry right for sustainable oil and gas operations – Alison Reid

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifying and the global gathering for COP27 just around the corner, the spotlight has never been more focussed on the sector’s battle to balance affordability, sustainability, and security of supply.

When it comes to shrinking the carbon footprint, chemical companies in particular, need to fully grasp opportunities for continuous improvement. This will ensure effort and ingenuity can embody and empower the supply chain to realise the greatest environmental, and financial, reward.

Leading the carbon abatement curve

As a global leader in chemistry and highly engineered solutions which help enhance oil production safely and efficiently around the world, ChampionX has developed an internal methodology for calculating their carbon footprint, to better understand the carbon impact of their current and future products and services. It’s an offering more customers are keen to access as they look to gain a greater understanding of their suppliers’ impact on the environment.

Employing more than 300 people across its two sites in the UK – Aberdeen and Southampton – the company offers a Sustainability Impact Assessment to help its clients identify actionable insights and guidance on an asset’s performance. This tangible evaluation can boost innovation to improve efficiency and cut carbon while accelerating the industry’s efforts to achieve net zero.

Its inaugural Sustainability Report, launched in September, is an example of the size and scale of the carbon challenge to the chemical sector. In particular, it emphasises the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) priorities to the business, its employees and the wider global communities in which it operates.

ChampionX GHG emissions workstream details both Scope 1 (direct GHG emissions) and Scope 2, (indirect GHG emissions associated with manufacturing) inventories. This involved collecting data from ChampionX-operated or controlled facilities and vehicle fleets around the world. In 2021, Scope 1 was 76,396 t CO2-e and Scope 2 was 64,266 t CO2-e. ChampionX Goal Zero ambitions asserts that zero environmental releases are possible because all incidents are preventable.

Driving decarbonisation in oil and gas

While pressure is understandably on oil and gas operators to scrutinise and evaluate carbon emissions, it’s also crucial that energy efficiency goals are integrated into the supply chain across all stages of operations. There has been encouraging action from sector bodies, such as Offshore Energies UK, which is currently working on initiatives to bring together sustainable operations under one industry programme for a more cohesive approach to tackling net zero.

To support the ongoing energy transition, in July 2021, ChampionX acquired Scientific Aviation, Inc., a market leader in site-specific and regional methane emissions monitoring solutions for continuous and periodic monitoring applications. It has also launched a portfolio of Extended-Release Platform technologies: a novel, nanoparticle-enabled chemistry, which can extend the lifetime of production chemical treatments three-fold, resulting in the potential to accelerate the decarbonisation of chemical applications, whilst achieving more energy- efficient, sustainable oil and gas operations.

By examining all areas of operations and viewing them through a sustainability lens, there are significant carbon reductions that can be made to ensure the oil and gas sector is addressing global climate targets. There are hurdles in the way, but the chemical industry remains poised to support this transition, ensuring a net zero future is within reach.

Alison Reid, UK Regional Manager, ChampionX