Approximately 25% of all anthropogenic generated methane comes from the oil and gas industry, and it is estimated that ~6% of those emissions are from storage tanks used in the production phase. Methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but has a significantly greater warming potential than carbon dioxide on short time scales. The emissions from these storage tanks are not well known, and new methods for quantifying emissions from these sources are needed. Storage tanks can either be smaller tanks spread out over an area at a number of wells or can be part of larger tank farms on the edge of a field with a large number of wells. GreenLITETM is a continuous monitoring system that is uniquely capable of continuously monitoring and mapping the spatial distribution of a gas concentration and emissions over very large areas using measurement paths up to 5 km. The system is currently being piloted for large-area fugitive emissions sources such as tailings ponds and open-pit mines. GreenLITETM has the potential to monitor a large number of storage tanks in either dense oil fields or at the tank farm scale, improving safety and reducing emissions in an economical way through scale. Quantifying emissions to a low uncertainty and high confidence requires standardized methods to validate the technology as it would be deployed in the field. Currently there is no known existing facility or method for performing the required validation on scales suited to the GreenLITETM operational scenario (size of a large tank farm). Established protocols exist that can be adapted to enable this validation to be performed at scale and can allow direct comparison with other leak detection and quantification methods in a quantifiable way. It is highly feasible that this can be demonstrated in this Phase I effort. The end users of the technology include regulatory bodies and facility operators within the oil and gas production segment. The potential market expands beyond tank farms to other complex environments within the oil and gas upstream and midstream segments at similar and larger scales that would benefit from continuous, autonomous, leak detection and quantification. The total market size is estimated at $2.2B over 10 years with an expected capture of $220M. GreenLITETM offers a unique capability for continuous monitoring of emissions over large areas and will contribute significantly to reduced emissions from the oil and gas sector and other key emitters.
