AIR QUALITY

CAPP's members significantly reduced air emissions in the last ten years, particularly in Western Canada, with significant achievements including reductions in benzene, sulphur oxides, and flaring and venting emissions.

THE CHALLENGE

Air emissions improvements in the '90s were driven by provincially based, multi-stakeholder partnerships between industry, government and concerned stakeholders. Many of these initiatives focused on "low hanging fruit"-or relatively low cost, high reward opportunities-including replacement of old equipment, updated requirements for new equipment and facilities, and improved natural gas conservation practices.

With many of the "big wins" implemented in the early '90s, air emissions reductions have slowed in the last five years. However, the efforts to further reduce emissions are ongoing. CAPP continues to work with the multi-stakeholder Clean Air Strategic Alliance (www.casahome.org), the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), Alberta Environment and Environment Canada to find additional opportunities.

Any future air emissions reductions will likely come with new technology development. For now, the upstream industry is primarily focused on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions; however, energy efficiency and conservation-focused technologies may also help reduce other non-GHG air emissions too.

AIR EMISSION DATA

Most of the air emissions data referenced in this section come from the ERCB, rather than CAPP's Stewardship data. There are a number of reasons for this approach:

• CAPP started collecting data after many of the most significant air emissions improvements occurred. Air emissions continue to decline, but improvements are relatively modest compared to the mid-1990s.
• CAPP's Stewardship data is aggregated across all Canadian regions, including Western Canada, Northern Canada and Atlantic Canada. Flaring associated with large offshore start-ups means that emissions from the Atlantic region have a significant impact on Canada-wide emissions trends, especially for flaring and venting. The emissions associated with these start-ups are included in our data set, but we do not consider them part of the long-term air emissions trends.

CAPP believes the focus on major improvements that occurred prior to Stewardship data collection, and limited attention to single events that are not part of the long-term trends, is appropriate.

COMMITTED TO OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE

Air emissions reductions result from multi-stakeholder agreements that drive improvements across the sector, or individual company innovation that is adopted as the new standard by industry and government over time.

Activities in 2006 and 2007 have focused on implementing past agreements on sulphur oxides emissions, looking for additional benzene reduction opportunities, and reducing Nitrogen Oxide (NOX) emissions in the oil sands.

BENZENE TECHNICAL ADVISORY TEAM (BTAT) AND CAPP BENZENE GUIDELINE

Benzene is a carcinogen-or a potentially cancer-causing substance-and there is believed to be some health risk at any level of exposure. Consequently, benzene has been designated toxic under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and is a highly regulated substance.

In 1995, Environment Canada formed the Benzene Technical Advisory Team with participation from government, CAPP and environmental organizations. BTAT's work has focused on benzene emissions from glycol dehydrators-a piece of equipment used to remove water from natural gas.

As a result of BTAT's work, significant reductions in glycol dehydrator-related benzene emissions have been achieved-an 82 per cent reduction between 1995 and 2005. BTAT would like to see further reductions. So in 2006, CAPP issued best management practices for our members (Control of Benzene Emissions from Glycol Dehydrators, June 2006)-further improvements are expected in the coming years.

Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx): Alberta Environment Updates Emissions Guidelines

NOx is an emissions issue that wasn't tackled by earlier improvement initiatives.

Industry acknowledges that economically viable improvements are possible with available technologies, even though current regulatory requirements may not require them. In 2007, CAPP worked with Alberta Environment to develop new NOx emissions guidelines for equipment such as boilers, heaters and turbines based on "best available technology economically achievable" or BATEA.

The new guidelines establish "beyond-compliance" performance targets for all new projects in the oil sands region of Wood Buffalo, with extension to the rest of the province expected in the next year.

HYDROCARBON LEAK MANAGEMENT AND PREVENTION

A CAPP member working group has been established to share lessons learned and todevelop an industry best management practice (BMP) for hydrocarbon leak prevention, detection and reporting in Atlantic Canada. The BMP will consider international processes and definitionsand will provide an Atlantic Canada focus to four elements of hydrocarbon leak management: "definition of leaks," "examination of primary causes," "best management practices to address leaks" and "reporting."

The working group has defined terms of reference, a work-plan, timeline, operating mandate and objectives and is intending to complete the final draft by the end of 2008.

FLARING AND FUGITIVE EMISSION REDUCTIONS

FLARING

Alberta: The ERCB's Directive 60 addresses the management of the upstream petroleum industry's flaring, incinerating and venting activities.

Included in that directive is Section 2.8-Economic Evaluation of Gas Conservation. This section outlines a company's responsibility to conduct an economic analysis for determining when to flare/vent or conserve solution gas.

To streamline the requirements of Section 2.8, CAPP published a new spreadsheet to help companies evaluate the economics of in-line testing using temporary pipelines for sweet or sour well flaring operations.

The ERCB has reviewed and approved the content and use of this document. The workbook can be downloaded by all upstream oil and gas companies from CAPP's web sites.