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=== Waste management ===
=== Waste management ===


Oil and gas companies are being increasingly confronted with problems related to drilled waste&nbsp;disposal.&nbsp;<ref>Drilling and Waste Management. Morillon, A., Vidalie, J.F., Hamzah, U.S. 2002. Presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Kuala Lumpur, 20-22 March. SPE-73931-MS. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/73931-MS.</ref>&nbsp;To comply with regulations and be&nbsp;environmentally responsible, oil and gas companies need to set up comprehensive environmental management systems.&nbsp;This approach should include&nbsp;a management plan establishing appropriate procedures, environmental awareness, training of personnel, and a whole set of technical measures, such as:
Oil and gas companies are being increasingly confronted with problems related to drilled waste&nbsp;disposal.&nbsp;<ref>Morillon, A., Vidalie, J.F., Hamzah, U.S. Drilling and Waste Management. 2002. Presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Kuala Lumpur, 20-22 March. SPE-73931-MS. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/73931-MS.</ref>&nbsp;To comply with regulations and be&nbsp;environmentally responsible, oil and gas companies need to set up comprehensive environmental management systems.&nbsp;This approach should include&nbsp;a management plan establishing appropriate procedures, environmental awareness, training of personnel, and a whole set of technical measures, such as:
<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">
<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">
<li>Installation of the site: All equipment must be designed so that any effluent is caught and kept from discharging directly into the environment.</li>
<li>Installation of the site: All equipment must be designed so that any effluent is caught and kept from discharging directly into the environment.</li>

Revision as of 11:49, 20 August 2015

In the context of E&P, environment is a subsection of HSE that focuses on the effects E&P has on the external environment. Typically,the discipline deals with those effects that occur outside the E&P footprint. Included are the effects of air emissions, waste water discharges, and disposal of waste.

Air emissions

Recently, global climate change and air quality have become increasingly important environmental concerns.[1] Consequently, there has been a rise in collaborative international efforts to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), occuring naturally and as the result of human activity. Criteria pollutants include emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and total unburned hydrocarbons. International and national governments are implementing more regulations on air emissions. Drilling contractors can play an important role in environmental stewardship by reporting carbon emissions from drilling operations, eliminating redundant emission measurements, and leading the industry in efforts to reduce these emissions.

Methane emissions

Carbon emissions

CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels has been on the incline since the industrial era; and with more than 85% of the world’s energy coming from fossil fuels, it will remain an important energy source well into the future. As the demand for fossil fuels is growing, so is the volume of CO2 emitted each year. This has led to concerns over the impact of CO2 emissions on global climate change. Sequestration is one option that is gaining interest to stabilize and reduce the concentration of CO2.

Reducing air emissions

Water use, produced water discharge and disposal

Water use and conservation

As water conservation becomes a more popular issue--in the oilfield and in other industries--many governments are creating new regulations to control the treatment, disposal, and storage of produced water. As if often the case with new regulations, the unintended consequences of the regulations can be beneficial, but sometimes worse than the original problem they were designed to alleviate. The importance of investigating the effects of regulatory requirements before implementation cannot be overstated.

Waste management

Oil and gas companies are being increasingly confronted with problems related to drilled waste disposal. [2] To comply with regulations and be environmentally responsible, oil and gas companies need to set up comprehensive environmental management systems. This approach should include a management plan establishing appropriate procedures, environmental awareness, training of personnel, and a whole set of technical measures, such as:

  • Installation of the site: All equipment must be designed so that any effluent is caught and kept from discharging directly into the environment.
  • Protection of surface and groundwater: Protection through an accurate knowledge of local geology and hydro-geology should be validated by survey undertaken during the environmental baseline study.
  • Choice of drilling fluids: Recommendations about the use of water-based mud or low-toxicity-oil-based mud.
  • Chemical management: An effective management system of authorized chemicals is set up with a storage system, safety data files, and a good stock management system.
  • Reduction of waste volumes at the source: Water consumption, optimised mud recycling, reduction of cutting volumes.
  • Treatment of drill cuttings: Set up of a cuttings management plan, inerting (stabilization, solidification, encapsulation), incineration, controlled landfill, thermal desorption, cuttings re-injection, biological treatment.

As a general trend in the industry and particularly in oil and gas activities, the problem of waste disposal is becoming a key element of a good environmental management system.

Four principle factors contribute to this:

  • Regulatory constraints are becoming stricter--on an international and regional level,--and all countries have now environmental regulations, that are revised regularly.
  • One basic principle that has common practice is the accountability of the producer of waste from the time it is produced through their elimination or recovery.
  • Growing pressure from the media on the theme that is ultra-sensitive and where the explicit but restrictive concept of "zero discharge" is evident.
  • Greater scientific knowledge, making it possible to really grasp the true environmental impact, especially trough increasingly effective analytical techniques, with a finely tuned ecotoxicological approach.

Wastewater disposal

Naturally ocurring radioactive materials (NORM)

The concern over possible health and environmental risks regarding Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) or Low Specific Activity Scale (LSA) in upstream operations heightened during the 1970s and 1980s, and it continues today.[3] Early research on NORM, such as work by Gesell and E + P Forum, provided good background information and general guidelines, but did not lay out specific procedures and decision-logic steps for the variety of situations that occur in upstream and downstream settings. This was affected by the newness of the concerns as well as the complexity of trying to define two radioactive decay series along with the physical and chemical events that affect them over time in a variety of industrial environments.

Oil and chemical spills

Remediation and land reclamation

After an area of land is used for petroleum production, that land must be returned to a condition as close to its original state as possible. That can prove difficult because incidents like saline or oil spills can cause soil contamination that takes time and effort to repair. 

The incorrect remediation of oil and gas field wastes can, at the very least, cause tension between the land owner and the production operator.[4] Unsatisfactory remediation could also lead to legal conflicts, wasting natural and capital resources. Fortunately, agricultural techniques are available by which most hydrocarbon releases and adverse environmental impacts can be corrected.

Traditional hydrocarbon [TPH] remediation methods include biotreating, composting, dilution, dilution burial, road spreading, reuseable resource technology, and ultra-violet ray treatment. This paper discusses land treatment and dilution only, because of the authors' desire to provide an in-depth presentation. 

References

  1. Cadigan, M.F., Peyton, K. 2005. Baselining and Reducing Air Emissions from an Offshore Drilling Contractor's Perspective. Presented at the SPE/EPA/DOE Exploration and Production Environmental Conference, Galveston, TX, 7-9 March. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/94432-MSDocument IDSPE-94432-MS.
  2. Morillon, A., Vidalie, J.F., Hamzah, U.S. Drilling and Waste Management. 2002. Presented at the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Kuala Lumpur, 20-22 March. SPE-73931-MS. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/73931-MS.
  3. Thayer, E.C., Racioppi, L.M. 1991. Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials: The Next Step. Presented at the SPE Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, 11-14 November. SPE-23500-MS. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/23500-MS.
  4. Deuel, L.E.E., Holliday, G.H. 2003. Hydrocarbon Impacted Soil and Waste Remediation. Presented at the SPE/EPA/DOE Exploration and Production Environmental Conference, San Antonio, TX, 10-12 March. SPE-80596-MS. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/80596-MS.

Noteworthy papers in OnePetro

External links

See also

Category