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 Sustainability Strategy Commitments
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UKOOA Sustainability Strategy 2002 - First Report
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3. Protecting the Environment
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3.2 Increasing knowledge and understanding of impacts
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Commitment No. 44 - Greenhouse gases: measurement, forward assessment
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a) To facilitate discussion with government on our industrys GHG emissions within the UK total, we will, from 2001, report on all six GHGs emitted from offshore installations using DETR guidelines. In practice only three of the six GHGs are of significance offshore (CO2, CH4, N2O) with the other three (HFCs, PFCs and SF6) present in very limited quantities (if at all) and then in sealed systems and not released.
b) We agree to provide to EEMS (the Environmental Emissions Monitoring System) the necessary data including projections ahead, so that we understand the shape of the expected emissions curve during this mature phase of production and the impact of future decommissioning. (See also Commitment No.47 and No.55 for other actions relating to greenhouse gases).
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Progress to date : achievements and difficulties encountered
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a) The 2001 industry environmental performance data (See Section 3-Introduction) contains information on five out of the six GHGs that will be reported within the Kyoto protocol. The data for the sixth GHG, HFCs, will not be available until the 2002 data is reported (but quantities of HFCs emitted are expected to be very small).
Note: In terms of format, we will be able to report on four of the six GHGs using DETR guidelines. We will not be able to do so for PFCs and HFCs which being made up of a number of different compounds cannot be converted into CO2 equivalents (quantities are small in both cases).
b) In 2001, we commissioned a report on the atmospheric emission inventory, which included the provision of emission projections to 2015. The data shows that carbon dioxide emissions have increased in absolute terms due to steadily increasing production despite substantial reductions in flaring. However when emissions are indexed to production it is clear that the underlying trend is to improving performance.
Projections were based on forecasts of oil and gas production for the sector and extrapolating historic trends in GHG emissions performance in particular taking into account the age of installations. Forecasting GHG emissions beyond 3 to 4 years is subject to high uncertainty in both production forecasts and in the predicted performance of existing ageing fields and of new facilities. The industry's current "mid-range" projections are that GHG emissions have already peaked, will decline slowly to 2005 and then decline rapidly after that; while high range projections of future production show the peak occurring at around 2004.
Note: the graph below does not include estimates for energy use during decommissioning. The figures involved are approximate only as they involve a number of estimates.
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Reference Diagrams
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Sustainability Strategy Commitments
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