“Personally, I am very excited to be part of the Atlantic Hydrogen Project, which has the potential to make the cleanest burning hydrocarbon - natural gas - an even better and more sustainable fuel for the future.”
Oil and gas production operations in North America face a wide variety of environmental regulations. In particular, onshore production must grapple with existing and emerging regulations that address ambient air quality standards for ozone, fine particulates and NOx. The scope of these regulations will include the assessment of the need for emissions controls on the wellhead and field gathering reciprocating engine-driven compressor and pumping equipment that is ubiquitous in exploration and production (E&P) operations. These engines are used to produce electricity to compress and re-inject natural gas for increased oil production, drive smaller-load equipment such as pump jacks and to compress natural gas to be delivered to local gathering systems that ultimately feed into gas transmission pipelines. Current estimates are that approximately 15 million horsepower are operating in upstream production applications. At an average size of 250 hp, this implies a total E&P fleet of 60,000 engines. (Beshouri, Chapman, McCarthy, Nuss-Warren, & Whelan, 2006)
Potentially large environmental benefits lie in using hydrogen-enriched natural gas generated by CarbonSaver™ to fuel these reciprocating engines.
