Oil companies agree to reduce methane emissions

A coalition of the world’s oil companies agreed to reduce methane emissions from natural gas extraction—part of an effort to shore up the climate credentials of the hydrocarbon.

The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative said it would target reducing methane emissions to less than 0.25% of the total natural gas the group of 13 member companies produces by 2025.

Methane is the main component of natural gas. During extraction, transport, and processing, it often leaks into the environment. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. In the short term, it traps more heat although it stays shorter in the atmosphere. According to the International Energy Agency, one ton of methane is equivalent to as much as 87 tons of carbon dioxide over a 20-year time frame.

Natural gas production is growing. Many big oil companies are increasing production of natural gas to offset higher emissions from other hydrocarbon and coal sources. The switch makes the oil-and-gas industry look better when demonstrating emission reduction to limit climate change.

For that reason, some oil companies, Shell, in particular, has tilted its production mix toward more gas output.

According to 2018 report by the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, as much as $34 billion of global gas supply is lost each year through leaks and venting. That is another valid reason to limit those methane escapes and park the proceeds to the bottom line. That in itself could fund part of the effort to stop or reduce the leaks.

Getting the most out of EHS mobile apps

Mobile tools for EHS have been around for some time now. By now, most users are familiar with the benefits such as instant data collection and access to reference information for better, more reliable EHS programs. However, as any tech-savvy individual knows, new software tools are consistently becoming more powerful and more accessible, and that is certainly true for mobile applications.  That “ground-breaking” EHS mobile app that you purchased five years ago may now be looking a little dated if your software provider has not actively updated it.  Here are some of the beyond-the-basic features that you probably really want, but perhaps never knew existed for your EHS mobile app.

 

Location metadata and mapping integration

Your coordinates are actively being recorded every time your phone moves. Why not record that data as part of an incident report or sample collection?  Or use that information to locate the position of a monitoring well or other asset?  Much of EHS information is associated to a specific location, so automatically storing your location can help ensure that you know where your data are originating.

You may be thinking that phone/tablet GPS is not very accurate, and you would be correct…..for now.  According to GPS.gov, phone accuracy is typically accurate to within a 4.9 m (16 ft.) radius under open sky.  While this may be accurate enough for some situations, it will not be sufficient for others.  However, according to the IEEE, a respected technical engineering association, 2018 and beyond will bring new more accurate chips to phones that will improve GPS accuracy to about 30 centimeters, which should be much more useful for field locations especially when identifying the scene of a spill or accident.

Screen capture of Locus Mobile app using GIS for field data collection

So start thinking about what can be improved with your business process by getting more accurate location information, and start looking at upgrading mobile devices in the next year or two.

 

Barcode and QR code scanning

You are probably already using your phone to compare prices at your local store.  It is amazingly easy to simply scan a product’s barcode and instantly see the best available price locally or online.  Since virtually every phone/tablet now has a built-in camera, you can use that to scan barcodes or QR codes to associate data entry with a tagged location or asset. This can save you from possible mismatch errors that can occur when simply selecting from a list or typing in data.

Locus Mobile - barcoding

For users with thousands of locations/assets, it’s also a huge time saver when you can skip the long list of locations and just point and click. Moreover, for anyone tracking assets or even chemical inventory, barcodes are essential.  In fact, many facilities have been using barcodes for years, but now they don’t need a specialized device. Barcodes or QR codes can be incorporated into mobile apps in new and unexpected ways to streamline business process and do more in the field with less physical overhead.

Therefore, the next time you are doing an audit, you can easily examine an instrument and immediately determine its calibration and maintenance status along with reporting any audit findings.

 

Real-time entry validation

It is not enough to just enter your EHS event information into a mobile device.  You also want to make sure you are entering correct information.  Modern EHS mobile tools can check your entry as you enter it, to match whatever criteria are established for that data.  So you make sure that you’re entering a pH reading of 7.2, rather than 72.  You can also use configurable pick lists to limit data entry to your specific desired entries and not have to deal with misspellings or 16 different ways to say “cloudy”.  Make sure that pick lists are configurable and can be shared with each of your company’s devices.

Locus Mobile - range limits

 

Use your voice

We are starting to use voice recognition technology in our mobile devices to quickly send out text messages.  Why not use it for recording audit comments or field issues?  Voice recognition is getting better and better every year, and can get your comments onto a data collection form much faster than typing and can be especially useful for conditions where gloves are required and typing or stylus input is not practical.  Using the phone’s native abilities, take advantage of voice feature to streamline note taking knowing you can always fix up any issues back in the office.

Locus Mobile - voice recognition

 

Unique and custom forms

For many EHS programs, you may have your own data collection needs that are specific to your facility or industry.  Mobile EHS apps now allow you to tailor your input forms to add new data fields, remove unwanted fields, change some of the logic like making certain fields required, and make certain fields tied into established pick lists.  Even better, you can match the mobile form exactly to the original paper form, making the transition to mobile simple and intuitive for staff.

Locus Mobile - Custom Form

Along with form customization options, modern mobile apps let you have many different forms in one app, so the folks tracking waste shipments have their form, while to folks performing facility audits have their forms, which may be specific to the facility of the audit itself.  One app with many forms greatly streamlines the training aspect of deploying mobile and gives EHS managers great flexibility to easily update forms when regulations change.

 

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