Envana Software Solutions doesn’t require new equipment to detect methane emissions at oil and gas sites. Instead, it takes advantage of what’s already there.

The Houston-based company, which this month was awarded a $4.2 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), uses AI and physics-based models to paint a bigger picture using smaller details.

Envana gleans information from SCADA data from sensors already installed on site, said Khaled Hashem, senior product manager for Envana.

“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 use the sensors to measure methane by combining the findings with other available data and then applying pattern recognition with AI.

In the U.S., most companies conduct regular emissions detection imaging from the sky. By identifying patterns using information from those flyovers and other existing data, Envana can see a range of events, such as a blowdown, tanks exceeding their design or a leak, Hashem said.

“So by triangulating and taking the data from all the different detection providers that might be used and also the company's own data, we can arrive at a better context,” he said.

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.

“We might be able to detect incomplete combustion or inefficient combustion or cold flaring in various situations, and we can set an alarm for that,” he said. “We can send a trigger for that for the company to fix it, but also we can just automate to remote light the flare where that technology is available.”

Envana started as a joint venture between Halliburton Co. 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.

“As for what Envana actually does, I would call it digital greenhouse gas management,” Nielsen said. “We cover the full gamut of GHG emissions Scopes 1, 2 and 3 for oil and gas, allowing tracking, forecasting and a more granular understanding of emissions along the full value chain.”

With its new grant from the DOE, Envana will further expand its models. The company has some partners and is looking for more, Nielsen said.

“Anyone who would like to participate, we’re happy to take them on or have a conversation with them,” she said. “We have a lot of oil and gas experience in our team. We have domain experts that are familiar with production sites, with SCADA data, with upstream, with midstream, with methane data in particular and with methane regulations.”

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