As concerns about climate change and emissions grow, the oil and gas industry is under increasing public and stakeholder pressure to reduce its carbon footprint. And many of the major operators have responded with ambitious targets to bring their emissions in line with goals set out in the Paris Agreement signed in 2016.

The industry depends, however, on a vast supply chain that may not share the same goals or be subject to a similar level of scrutiny.

How the service companies rank on emissions may depend, as with oil and gas operators, on size and visibility. And some of the larger contractors insist that they too are making efforts to shrink their own carbon footprints — and putting pressure on the vendors they depend on to do the same.

One day last month near BP’s offices close to Sunbury, west of London, the UK supermajor assembled a mini-exhibition of vendors under a large tent in a field where a light rain was falling.

The gathering was set up to showcase the developers of some of the technologies the company is using in its effort to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, including flare monitoring, methane leak detection and quantification, and long-distance drones for offshore leak inspections.

Emissions challenge

Presiding over the Sunbury technology exhibition was BP’s Gordon Birrell, upstream chief operating officer for production, transformation and carbon, who said that suppliers are coming around on the emissions challenge as they see demand for low-carbon equipment increase.

For example, manufacturers have moved quickly to provide low-emission valves as operators, implementing methane reduction strategies in producing fields, commit to large-scale orders.

BP has also pledged to start using methane monitoring and measurement technology at all its major gas installations.

Suppliers are enthusiastic “when they can see volume”, Birrell said.

“I think most suppliers see that the development of the future will require low-emission everything. Each component – each of the hundreds of thousands of components that go into building an oil and gas facility – each one will be the low-carbon version over time, and I think suppliers see that,” he told Upstream.

“Anything that can stop us combusting more natural gas as part of the production process – more efficient gas turbines and compressors, for example – the supply chain will see the demand and will rise to the challenge.”

The topic surfaced at the Offshore Europe conference in Aberdeen last month.

Speaking to conference delegates, John O’Brien, focus area manager for facilities, operations, reliability and deep-water at Chevron, said the energy transition now affects “every part of our business”, including “the value chain and their carbon footprint”.

“I equate it to safety,” O’Brien said. “We never have a conversation about design, construction or fabrication that doesn’t include a conversation about doing it safely.

“I think now that’s two conversations. It’s how do we do it safely? And what are you doing to reduce emissions?

“I think that is going to be a fundamental change in the conversations that we all have, every day, with each other. We don’t have that at the moment.”

Value chain

O’Brien posed the question to vendors: “What are you doing in your production value chain to reduce emissions? Not on our end — your end. Because if we’re all part of the problem, we all need to be part of the solution, all the way back down the value chain.”

Speaking with Upstream later, O’Brien expanded on the changes under way in the oil and gas supply chain and how operators are applying pressure on vendors — but after first insisting on internal changes.

Chevron, he said, is trying to instil in employees “that we are part of the solution and asking the question of everybody, in every part of our business, what are you doing to reduce emissions? Having a conversation that (acknowledges) it’s not always going to be the cheapest option. We may have to pay more in some areas in order to get the lowest carbon footprint.”

Where suppliers are concerned, he added: “I don’t think there’s anybody opposed” to being asked to detail their emissions-reduction strategy. “It’s getting people’s heads around, now I’ve been asked the question, what’s the answer?” O’Brien said.

“I don’t think they are opposed. And I think they understand that going forward doing business with us is going to be contingent upon them being able to answer that question.”

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Taking strides to cut the emissions footprint