Canada, gas lobby launch emissions testing centre
The Canadian Gas Association (CGA) and its NGIF Capital said April 9 they have entered into an agreement with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) for the development of the NGIF Emissions Testing Centre (ETC), announced in March when the CGA created NGIF Capital.
NRCan will provide C$8.25mn (US$6.6mn) from the Canadian Emissions Reduction Innovation Network to help create the ETC, which will include a “plug-and-play” testing platform for simulated emissions testing at the University of Calgary Energy Centre and live testing at the West Wolf Lake gas processing plant near Edson, jointly owned by Tourmaline Oil and Perpetual Energy.
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The approved funding includes instrumentation for emissions reduction measurement and testing technologies at West Wolf Lake and data portal and high-quality personnel development through the University of Calgary (U of C) Global Research Initiative in Sustainable Low Carbon Unconventional Resources.
Testing and evaluation will focus on emission source areas at gas processing plants, including fugitive leaks, flaring emissions and venting losses from storage tanks.
“The creation of an instrumented cohesive testing platform based around the quantification of emissions and allowing for direct comparisons of startups on a single live gas production system is ground-breaking,” NGIF Capital CEO John Adams said. “The use of this facility will increase data availability, verify clean technology performance, and improve understanding of the emissions management potential of the technologies being tested.”
The U of C will develop a data portal to enable information-sharing amongst researchers and will provide two laboratory workspaces dedicated to simulated emissions testing of new technologies before they are deployed for field testing at West Wolf Lake.
“The NGIF Emissions Testing Centre will further advance the kinds of technology and solutions needed to move the natural gas sector towards a lower emission future, and contribute to the province’s efforts to reduce oil and gas methane emissions by 45% from 2014 levels by 2025,” said Dale Nally, Alberta’s associate minister of natural gas and electricity.