By Huligan0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons
And it is apparently not alone. According to the Environment Agency, “many” existing conventional oil-producing sites in England are also venting gases produced during extraction.
The Environment Agency has estimated that the Dorset well, operated by Perenco from the cliff-top at Kimmeridge Bay, released nearly 300 tonnes of methane in 2017.
Over its life, the well could have emitted the equivalent of more than a million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
This appears to contradict assurances that the onshore industry takes great care to avoid venting gases and it raises questions about the strength of UK oil and gas regulations.
“Venting by design”
The Kimmeridge well has an old-fashioned nodding-donkey style beam pump and has been operating since the 1960s.
The site is in the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Perenco, the operator, also runs the nearby Wytch Farm oil field, the largest onshore oil field in western Europe. Wytch Farm is regularly used by the industry as an illustration of how oil production can successfully co-exist with beautiful places and high house prices.
Methane venting at Kimmeridge has been investigated by Stuart Lane, a campaigner and researcher in Dorset, following a tip-off. He said:
“I was told by a reliable source that the Kimmeridge well was cold venting methane.
“After some back and forth with the Environment Agency, it became clear that not only was the well cold venting methane, it was doing so by design.
“Unlike accounts that I was aware of in the United States and Australia, where methane is leaking from poorly managed fracking wells, the Kimmeridge well is not leaking. It isn’t attempting to capture the gas that accompanies the oil upon extraction. Neither does the site combust it and flare it off as carbon dioxide.”
Information request
DrillOrDrop made a Freedom of Information request to the Environment Agency (EA) about the emissions from the Kimmeridge well. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, trapping much more heat over 100 years than carbon dioxide.
The EA confirmed to us what it had told Mr Lane.
- The Kimmeridge well has a permitted release point for methane
- The volume of methane released to the atmosphere in 2017 was 284 tonnes
- This is an estimate based on the production level of crude oil.
The EA told us:
“The crude oil production is measured, and then a gas-to-oil ratio is applied to estimate emissions. The gas within the oil is periodically measured to confirm the accuracy of the estimation.”
The EA told Mr Lane that the well produced 3,179 tonnes of crude oil in 2017 and that this volume was used to calculate the level of methane.
“Many sites are venting gases to atmosphere”
Under environmental permitting regulations, a site operator must minimise emissions. We asked the EA how Perenco, the operator of the Kimmeridge well, could comply with the regulations when it was releasing this much methane.
In its reply, the EA suggested that the Kimmeridge well was not alone.
“We are aware that many of the existing conventional oil producing well sites are currently venting ‘associated gases’ to atmosphere as a point source emission.”
A “point source emission” is the term used for the release of emissions from a particular location at an oil or gas site.
The EA said these sites, like Kimmeridge, were operating under old-style environmental permits. DrillOrDrop has previously reported that these permits have not required onshore oil and gas sites to carry out groundwater monitoring or submit records of water reinjection, formation stimulation or the use of acid.
The EA said operators of oil production sites were expected to submit proposals to use the best available technique for handling what are known as “associated gases” produced alongside the oil. But at Kimmeridge the EA said:
“Other abatement methods have been trialled, but at present all methane is released through the permitted release point.”
We asked whether methane emissions were monitored using optical imaging cameras. The EA replied:
“Optical Imaging cameras are in the process of being trialled but have not been used to date at Kimmeridge.”
We asked what techniques had been used to try to abate methane releases at the well. The EA replied:
“Over the years a number of methods have been technically assessed. A significant investment was also made to install a micro turbine to convert the gas to electricity. It was found that the flow of gas was neither consistent, or sufficient enough to support the turbine and this approach has been abandoned. The operator is required to review new technologies on an annual basis.”
“How could a regulatory system allow this to happen?”
Researcher Stuart Lane said:
“I am concerned how the regulatory system allowed this to happen. I am also concerned with how Perenco could allow this, given that it trades upon a reputation for safety and best practice. Perenco certainly doesn’t lack the funds. The company’s operations are very lucrative, they are currently offering £1.7 million for environmental projects in the area near its core operations at Wytch Farm, just across the hills from the Kimmeridge well.
“It isn’t a recent problem that is an unfortunate blip. The well has been operating since 1961.
“What is more, there are other wells out there also regulated under the same type of permit.”
The Environment Agency told DrillOrDrop earlier this year that 38 onshore oil and gas sites were still operating under the old-style permits. We have asked which of these sites are also allowed to vent methane.
Calculating the carbon footprint of Kimmeridge
Mr Lane wanted to get an idea of the level of methane emitted by the Kimmeridge well over its lifetime. Using publicly-available data , he estimated that the carbon footprint, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), is well over a million tonnes (see The calculation).
To put that in perspective, he said the carbon footprint for a UK citizen is about 10 tonnes a year. Based on these figures, the Kimmeridge well, over its life, has produced as much CO2e as 112,500 people do in a year. The population of Poole, the closest large town to the well, is about 150,000 people.
Details of peer-reviewed paper: Gluyas, J. G., Evans, I. J. and Richards, D., 2003. The Kimmeridge Bay Oilfield, Dorset, UK Onshore [Periodical]. GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY, LONDON
“The regulatory system appears to be permitting gross levels of pollution that fly in that face of legally binding climate change commitments including the 2008 Climate Change Act.
“It is clear the mitigation options have been investigated but the most obvious and simplest approach in my opinion would be to close any well that is not designed to avoid methane emissions.
“This one small well appears to have done enormous damage and exposes wider concerns. We have a regulatory system that is prepared to approve massive levels of pollution and an industry that will seemingly operate to the minimum standards that regulations impose, however low. The Kimmeridge well raises questions about the regulation and operation of other well sites around the country.
“This also raises serious questions about the “Gold Standard” regulatory system that is being promoted as the impenetrable firewall to defend us and our environmental from any additional dangers posed by fracking.
“At a time when the government is seeking unprecedented levels of trust and centralisation regarding the process to approve new wells, this example demonstrates that local people with concerns about local installations are important in the planning process. Sometimes they are the ones that ask the overlooked questions and hold institutions to account.”
Mr Lane has launched a petition to close onshore wells that are cold venting methane. Link here
Company response
DrillOrDrop invited Perenco to comment on emissions from the Kimmeridge well. We also asked if the company’s Wytch Farm had a permitted release point for methane.
Its public relations company replied:
“I have just spoken to the team and Perenco would like to decline to comment please.”
Updating regulations
The Environment Agency is currently updating permits issued before October 2013 for onshore oil and gas sites.
Under a new-style permit, operators would be required to produce a plan for using or disposing of associated gases.
The EA said:
“The plan must contain detailed consideration of all available options for the beneficial utilisation of all of the available gas from their activities.
“Where such utilisation is not feasible, the plan must consider in detail all available options, both combustion and non-combustion based, for the disposal or abatement/mitigation of waste gas so as to minimise its environmental impacts as far as available techniques allow.”
The re-permitting programme began in 2016 and is still underway. At Kimmeridge, the EA said the application was made on 11 July 2017. It added:
“the permit application is currently in the process of being determined and we expect to have a decision late 2018.”
Categories: investigation
DRILL OR DROP? 
Exactly Slade!
I actually invested in a hybrid thanks to Angus. Meanwhile, the antis puff around from site to site in their diesels, driveling on about Ponzi schemes. However, it will be a long time before you can fast charge a hybrid near Kimmeridge Bay.
Jono-please work out how to structure a sentence. There’s a good chap.
They can’t deal with the substance, Slade. Might be wiser if they didn’t emphasise that, but that’s what is left.
Obviously all these sites mentioned should have a STOP notice put on them immediately until measures are put in place to prevent these emissions!
Peter K
They have permission, so it would not be legal to tell them to stop production.
The good news is that more recent permissions require the flaring of the gas rather than venting ( Wressle, UKOG sites etc ), so the more recent stuff will be more environmentally friendly than the old
Perhaps we should use less imported oil instead.
‘Perhaps we should use less imported oil instead’
Much better than that would be to maximise on our renewable energy potential. Wind and daylight is free and infinite. Surplus wind power in the early hours when demand is low can be used to charge the inevitable imminent massive increase in electric cars.
John please what do we do at night and when the wind doesn’t blow. Battery technology is nowhere near ready to provide grid scale storage. For nearly every gigawatt of electricity produced by renewables you need another gigawatt of reliable back-up supply waiting in the wings to fill in for windless nights etc which is obviously extremely expensive. So what’s the answer to the intermittency problem, you tell me.
Battery storage and solar projects doing well in the UK
https://www.energy-storage.news/news/retail-giant-amazons-uk-plans-include-3.77mw-tesla-battery-with-solar-pv
Provable commercial carbon capture and storage…………Hello anybody out there.
CCS has been worked on for years and always comes up to expensive.
The race between battery storage and CCS has already been won.
Renewables and battery storage is the present and the future.
John
Good to see Amazon fitting solar power and batteries to one of their sites. Tesla.com provides info on what they all and what it can be used for.
I note that all that investment will provide 17% of their needs at that site, leaving 83% to be supplied by the grid.
None of that will be powering the many white vans delivering their products around the country.
So….some way to go for us yet, but always good to see progress.
Maybe Amazon will lead in the use of electric delivery vans?
John
Both are fine by me.
But tonight wind is producing 23% of the required power, with renewables providing 34% in total.
Fossil fuel is 42%
So a way to go before we have enough power from wind for a surplus, then some work to do for that surplus to be sufficient to power electric cars.
Wind and sun are free, as is rainfall, but energy out of a cable or in your tank is not.
Maybe this is why there is so much weird illness on the Isle of Wight. Since coming to live here we have noticed that we are often just feeling lousy, for no reason.
Sally
Good wind up
Sorry to have to correct you Sally, but I live closer to Kimmeridge than you do, and have been visiting that beach for over 50 years and I feel great. But then, I am a positive sort of chap and my glass is half full. Maybe the French are to blame for your issue? All those nuclear power stations running away to plonk some electricity through the interconnectors under the channel and, of course, the wind direction is a closer fit. Much more exciting possibility. Or, there may be a link to the thermal energy being taken from under Southampton-Germany seems to create all sorts of problems with that when they try it.
I must admit I feel lousy when visiting the IOW. Not exactly an uplifting environment, but suits some.
For all those people out there saying renewables can power everything, look at Germany and it’s mighty Energiewende Wind Turbines…
Germany now says it can’t get rid of coal until 2035 or even 2038!!!!
So for the next 20 years Germany will burn the worst Coal possible
That’s long after Nord Stream 2 is installed, a direct gas supply from Mother Russia, only a couple of years after this is up and running and the Ukraine will fall to Russia
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/06/18/russias-nord-stream-ii-pipeline-is-ukraines-worst-nightmare/#e89533035242
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/germany-apos-rwe-says-too-152532152.html
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/13/germany-is-a-coal-burning-gas-guzzling-climate-change-hypocrite/
Denmark and Germany running rings round us on cheap popular clean wind power.
Click to access WindEurope-Annual-Statistics-2017.pdf
When you look at UK wind speeds you can see just how much we could have
http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/wres/euromap.htm
If we maximise on renewables and export less of our home grown North sea supplies we would not need to import.
John – you have have an odd way of interpreting a report? How are Denmark and Germany running rings round us?
And yet again you tell us about exporting our north sea supplies – we are a net gas importer, by a significant amount, this has been explained to you several time before. 2017 in Terawatthours:
Demand 875
Production N Sea 465
Imports 399
Exports 130
(net Import 269)
Click to access Ch4.pdf
And yet again you miss off the breakdown of the import sources. This has been explained many times before but happy to go again.
In 2017 the total amount of gas exported was greater than LNG imports which was 9% of total import
Page 41
Click to access Gas.pdf
So what we have is that if we stopped exporting then we would not need any LNG.
That leaves our Norweign piped gas.
Could UK shale be cheaper, cleaner, and more secure than piped Norweign gas?
Let’s ask the Senior vice president of Statoil who was sat next to Francis Egan in the House of Lords.
And why Statoil turned its back on UK
Another witness to the committee, Tor Martin Anfinnsen, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Trading, Statoil, said his company had interests in shale but only in the US. He explained why:
“We had a look at the UK sometime back as part of a global survey with Chesapeake, of the US, but we decided against going into the UK.
“We believed we were operating in a more prolific basin in US than what the UK could offer. But I think it was primarily it was what we call the above ground risk, not so much government policy but it’s a fairly densely populated country this and there have been obstacles, if you will, to our activities in the Marcellus field in the US as well and we thought they may be even tougher to overcome here.”
“.For us, it’s much more cost efficient, at least based on our own calculations, to develop offshore fields, our offshore Norway assets, and bring that gas into the UK by pipeline.”
https://drillordrop.com/2016/11/13/francis-egan-on-drilling-in-2017-low-gas-prices-financing-expansion-and-how-many-wells-can-you-fit-on-a-site/
So you agree we are a net gas importer? Thank you.
Regarding what we export, it is more likely this is part of what we import rather than north sea gas, buy cheap, sell more expensive. But it is irrelevant where the export comes from. We are a net importer. Norway / LNG where ever – we are a net importer. We could export zero and reduce our imports accordingly (as you have noted) but we are still importing 269 Terawatthours (in 2017) or over 30% of our UK gas consumption. And if LNG is cheaper than Norwegian gas (which is in decline) then we will import LNG preferentially.
And now coal is cheaper than gas (and clearly renewables can’t fill the gap as they have first call for demand):
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/17/coal-comeback-could-drive-up-annual-uk-energy-emissions-report
Beware of scary Norwegians !
This investor has clearly been ‘shorted’. 😉
John
Good to see the UK in second place re installed capacity in 2017, running rings round the EU as per usual.
Lots to look forwards too as theclarge wind farms off the east coast come on line.
Running rings round germany re coal as well.
Kisheny, Germany intends to eliminate current use of nuclear power by 2022. Some plants have already been closed ahead of their intended retirement dates. This rush to close down nuclear plants too early has resulted in their increased use of coal. Nowt to do with renewable energy. “Energiewende”, simply means “energy turnaround” or “energy transformation”.
The German Government did not do their sums correctly when reducing nuclear power and that is why they need to burn so much coal.
You’re happy for Germany to burn coal for the next twenty odd years then?
In the meantime import lots of gas from their master Russia…
And then they don’t intend to pipe in Russian gas?? To help the Russians fund their armed forces.
They also intend to pay for their own defence, and intend to pay out compensation from their car industry! I was going to say, don’t hold your breath-but I think you should. Good intentions are the politicians cop out, and usually stink.
By the way, have they paid out the 6 billion Euro compensation to the nuclear industry yet-or was that just an intention?
Trump may sanction this pipeline so Germany will be in trouble. Depends on Trump getting a second term of course.
I think there was an “agreement” that EU would take more fossil fuels from USA during the recent meeting between Junker and Trump.
So, we will probably see some more countries who decide not to frack, importing “fracked” US oil and gas! Should be good for the world’s ship builders.
On the subject of USA and Fossil fuels have a look at what could happen if Trump listened to the company that rent their rockets to NASA because Tesla rockets they are more technically advanced.
https://www.inverse.com/article/34239-how-many-solar-panels-to-power-the-usa
How much tax does the UK receive for Norwegian gas, John???
I think you will find that it is Norwegian tax which goes into their Wealth Fund, currently standing at over $1 trillion.
Last time I was in Norway, they were a little unsure what to spend it upon. Nice problem to have.
One day you may accept that stuff imported contributes tax to the country it comes from and provides insecurity, if it is an essential, to the country purchasing as currencies fluctuate. Inconvenient facts, but still facts.
Here it is again, the tax club; you are only in the club when you pay taxes….hang on a minute, doesn’t ‘offshore’ company mean it does not pay indigenous taxes; aww, seems like your buddies are not in our club then, better downgrade them; group hug….
I hear Monaco is nice this time of year…..