Energy Technology Startups Save Methane to Save Money

The methane emissions business is picking up steam as startups introduce solutions to keep gas in pipes and out of the atmosphere.

Companies including Envana Software Solutions, ZENRG Services and LongPath Technologies are getting not only awards from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) but also private investments. They’re deploying lasers, AI and new equipment to detect leaks more quickly and capture gas that might otherwise have escaped in routine operations.

Many of the businesses received grants from the DOE resulting from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which created the federal Methane Emissions Reduction Program. The program provided $1.36 billion in financial and technical assistance through multiple funding opportunities; it also established a waste emissions charge (WEC) for methane.

The WEC’s future is uncertain, as Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate have introduced bills to kill it. It applies to petroleum and natural gas facilities that emit more than 25,000 metric tons (mt) of CO₂-e per year, charging them $900/mt for reported methane emissions in 2024, then $1,200 in 2025 and $1,500 for 2026 and beyond.

For the moment, the incentive exists. Even without it, the industry has been making progress for some time. S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates methane emissions from the Permian Basin declined 26% in 2023 from 2022.

Companies big and small are moving to keep the product from escaping. After all, it’s inventory, the price of natural gas is trending upward and demand is expected to keep rising.

Here are some of the new players.

ZENRG Services

ZENRG Services, based in Houston, deploys mobile units to job sites to enable the safe and emissions-free transfer of gas or liquids from operations into pipelines. The company has secured Series A funding to support its expansion plans from a team including the private firm EIC Rose Rock, Chevron Technology Ventures and BP Energy Partners.

“We’re able to keep all the customers’ material, whether it be gas or liquids, in that system that the customer owns by compressing it under high pressure,” said CEO Joe Chandler, formerly the CEO of Yellowjacket Oilfield Services. “The technology that we use hasn’t been readily available in the market before, and now we are using it in several different ways.”

Sam Edwards, ZENRG’s co-founder and COO, said ZENRG formed in late 2021 with two applications in mind. That number grew rapidly.

“We probably have north of 25 applications” at work in upstream, midstream, downstream, chemicals and utilities, he said. “Once they understand the concept is as easy as moving product from one area or one vessel or pipeline or other containment that is under pressure into another area that’s able to receive it, that’s when the client’s minds will start to work and the brainstorm will begin to occur.”

David Clouse, managing director of EIC Rose Rock, said his firm picked ZENRG out of more than 100 companies in the emissions-reduction space because the solution is economically beneficial.

“It’s not dependent on government mandates or whether the Trump administration guts all of the emissions regulations and mandates and potential fees,” he said.

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Envana Software Solutions

This joint venture between Halliburton and private equity firm Siguler Guff detects methane emissions by applying AI to data from existing sensors. It was awarded a $4.2 million grant from the DOE to advance its AI methane detection solution.

Envana gleans information from supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, said Khaled Hashem, senior product manager for Envana. Most oil and gas operations have SCADA on site already.

“These are your flow sensors and your temperature sensors,” Hashem said. “Every single oil and gas site, almost without exception, has invested in those. Even the smaller sites will have at least a sensor, and large sites have thousands of sensors.”

Envana’s software can combine the data from those sensors with other available data, then apply AI’s pattern recognition to detect methane.

That information helps operators in three ways, Hashem said. It delivers actionable data, sets off alarms when necessary and allows companies to automate to avoid leaks before they happen.

Envana started as a joint venture between Halliburton and the private equity firm Siguler Guff, said Roxana Nielsen, vice president of products and previously Halliburton’s director of stewardship and sustainability reporting. “It was my responsibility to do things like our annual sustainability report,” Nielsen said. “It was pretty clear that there were some gaps in how oil and gas companies could do this more efficiently.” Halliburton’s commercial software division was also looking at the space, and eventually Envana was spun off.

Pioneer Energy

Pioneer’s technology can deliver efficiency gains in two ways: emissions reduction and increased crude yield right at the well pad.

The technology processes wellhead fluid, replacing traditional infrastructure such as phase separators. This closed system completely processes the crude, resulting in zero routine flaring with no need for atmospheric storage tanks. Pioneer, based in Lakewood, Colorado, says it can boost a well’s crude yield by 5% to 10%.

With traditional systems, “anyplace you have a connection point, a flange, a valve, you’ve got the potential for fugitive emissions,” said Joseph Palaia, vice president of business development. “We can replace all of that with refining technology that we’ve miniaturized and automated. We build in a factory environment, with a minimum amount of field labor required to install it and operate it. And it’s 100% electric.”

Longpath Technologies

The company uses an array of devices and mirrors to create a laser-beam fence around drill pads and other facilities. The system recently received conditional approval for use in New Mexico.

The system works because light changes when it passes through methane, said Caroline Alden, co-founder and chief scientist at Longpath, based in Boulder, Colorado.

“When you send that laser beam that we’ve created that’s very specifically tuned to methane’s vibrational and rotational properties, and then we bounce the light back off that mirror, we can see essentially where the methane fingerprint has been imposed on that light,” she said.

Mounting the Longpath system means companies can reduce regular in-person inspections, which saves a lot of mileage in an area as vast as the Permian.

Kuva Systems

Kuva Systems was awarded a $5 million contract from the DOE to support its remote emissions investigation system across 175 oil and gas sites in the U.S.

The system provides root causes of emissions directly to field staff, said Kuva CEO Stefan Bokaemper, allowing the operators to integrate monitoring into their workflow without hiring extra staff.

Xplorobot

Xplorobot’s Laser Gas Imager is a handheld mobile detection device that has been approved as an alternative test method for methane inspections. The company says it can detect emissions as small as 1 gram per hour and requires only three hours of training to use.

Highwood Emissions Management

Highwood Emissions Management’s new emissions intelligence platform (EIP) is designed to streamline methane emissions accounting and reporting for the oil and gas industry.

The company said EIP builds auditable, consistent and framework-compliant methane inventories that comply with global methane initiatives and regulations like OGMP 2.0, EU import requirements, MiQ and Veritas.