Flare performance – near-term actions to reduce GHGs
Across our operations, our goal is to reduce flaring through improved operating practices and the installation of new equipment. Reducing flaring helps prevent the waste of energy and decreases GHG emissions and air pollutants.
Solution gas refers to the natural gas that is produced in association with crude oil and crude bitumen in Upstream operations. Solution gas is often flared or vented during production. Imperial Oil has taken steps to conserve solution gas and, in 2009, recovered 99.9 percent of the solution gas produced. This is one of the highest rates of recovery among the top 50 oil producers in Alberta.
Our approach
In the Upstream and Downstream, flaring can also occur when gases cause excess pressure to build up within our process equipment, especially during facility maintenance or an unexpected operating event. While in both these cases flaring serves as a safety precaution and a waste outlet, we try to keep flaring to a minimum. In 2009, total hydrocarbon flare volumes across the Upstream production facilities rose 37.5 percent from 2008 levels. This was primarily due to a number of unplanned maintenance shutdowns at our conventional oil and gas facilities as well as increased exploration well testing in the Horn River Basin, where there is no existing infrastructure.
At our Downstream and Chemical manufacturing sites, hydrocarbon flaring totalled 50,800 tonnes, up 18 percent from 2008. This was primarily due to operational and maintenance events, turnarounds and refinery fuel gas management.
Concentrated efforts at the refineries to improve plant reliability and reduce unplanned outages are expected to further reduce flare emissions. In addition, the sites continue to implement equipment and procedural best practices to minimize flaring. For example, in 2009, our Nanticoke refinery took part in a review to reduce flaring. A team of Imperial and ExxonMobil experts developed recommendations to more readily find sources that cause flaring. They put a plan in place to check sources and improve communication and awareness of flaring as well as instituted a data visualization program that gives an at-a-glance snapshot of daily performance. This snapshot allows personnel to zero in on areas quickly if performance is outside the norm.