Of the current prospects for the development of unconventional oil and gas in Europe, Travis Hesketh, Vice President for Marketing and Applied Technologies, Emerson Process Management, points out it's an exciting time. “It's a fluid, changing environment at the moment. These things are are a hot topic and the landscape of how this business will develop has changed over the past 12 months significantly in terms of where the opportunities are. It's an interesting place to be working,” he says, but not only for unconventional oil and gas producers.

 

“We're finding there's a lot of interest too for those in the business-to-business environment who are the users of the products – the oil and gas which is produced,” he explains. “There's a lot of interest in many areas because of the consequences in the whole of the supply chain, infrastructure and things like this are very interesting today.

 

“Emerson is also interested because many of our customers are on the manufacturing or process industry side of industry, so that bears a great interest for us, too,” he adds.

 

Emerson, he says, is a $25 billion enterprise based on five platforms, one of which is Emerson Process Management. “Our interests are in the process industries to do with all the intelligence control, measuring side and safety side, answering the question, 'How do I make sure that my production facility is running safely, optimally, using the right amount of energy – minimizing it with respect to the intensity of the product that I'm looking to produce.'”

 

According to Mr. Hesketh, Emerson is a very large player in the marketplace, with virtually every manufacturing facility across the globe using some of the company's equipment, providing Emerson with a clear view of the issues faced by such industries.

 

Emerson looks at how it can use its in-depth expertise in engineering, plus the technology that it manufactures, to be able to address really critical issues that face its customers across the whole range of process and production industries.

 

Emerson Process Management works in three areas: equipment the company makes which measures and analyzes, provision of equipment that adjusts processes, and comprehensive equipment to control an entire facility: “We provide the brains, the analytical tools, the software, computing and all the things in between to connect up the measurements for all the control equipment – completing the full loop.”

 

Emerson also provides the engineering expertise to look at specific engineering problems that need solving as well as any support necessary after that to support a facility through its life-cycle, according to Mr. Hesketh.

 

In preview of the 2nd EUROPEAN SHALE GAS AND OIL SUMMIT 2014, taking place in London, 29-30 September, Emerson Process Management's Travis Heskith offered his perspectives to Natural Gas Europe and spoke about Emerson's capabilities within the unconventionals' space.

 

Considering the company's technologies and expertise, what would you say is Emerson Process Management's main area of interest?

 

It's applying ourselves into the equipment realm, the control strategies: how you connect facilities together to be able to reduce risk. Our aim is that we should be heading for a zero emissions strategy for these facilities.

 

As far as how this is done, in the UK and Europe there are some bigger players – a lot of the big oil and gas companies are involved in the UK – but there are also a lot of the smaller companies that are involved in the initial extraction and production. So one concern that we have is that often the smaller exploration companies just don't have the infrastructure, standards or procedures in place that the companies that have been around for many many years have got. This causes us some concern, because the simple fact is that in the UK currently there are no technical standards or legal requirements which would drive the use of state-of-the-art solutions: there's no minimum benchmark of “this is the standard of equipment that you should use.”

 

There are some best practice recommendations, but they're not universally applied. The European Commission is working on this in terms of developing best available techniques, the UK through the Department of Environment and Climate Change, the Health and Safety Executive are working on these issues and this is where companies like Emerson can have a positive impact to be able to say, “we think we can help with some of the solutions like the problem of how we minimize the amount of emissions from equipment as part of the processing.”

Could you tell us a bit about Emerson's role in the so-called shale gas revolution in North America?

 

We've got a good installed base of equipment in that marketplace. It's an established route for controlling onshore wellpads and things like that. The main intent of our participation in the ESGOS conference is to look at the next steps we should be taking to make sure that the European concerns are met 100%.

 

How would you describe the opportunity of developing unconventional oil and gas in the UK from the perspective of the products and services that you provide?

 

In the UK specifically it would appear to us that the regulatory frameworks and the incentives that have been brought forward by UK government puts the UK in a prime position for being almost the first to be producing unconventional gas. We've got some history of onshore oil and gas production already, so there's some infrastructure there already. We're a pretty small island, so transportation and supplying utilities, etc. is certainly easier in the UK than many other areas.

 

Regarding the opportunity for full-out extraction, we all know that there are a number of concerns from environmentalists, NGOs and other bodies – those are the sort of things I believe a company like Emerson can help with, by looking at the way in which we apply the intelligence and technologies to the problem of production and production (???).

 

Could you share an example of how some of the specific risks associated with unconventional gas are mitigated by these processes?

 

One of the very important facts that we think needs to be clearly understood is that the opportunity for producing shale gas is there, it's very significant and can provide a very large proportion of European gas needs. The risk is that through the production and production processes, using established methods there are significant amounts of methane emissions. These are twenty times worse in their greenhouse gas effect than CO2, so if we're going to make sure that we can meet our environmental obligations then we need a strategy to make sure that that methane remains within the process unit and doesn't leak, or isn't given off as part of the standard production process.

 

That's one of the critical issues that we see needs addressing.

 

From the work that we've seen there are techniques called “green completions” where instead of allowing the bubbling off of gas you can reprocess it, recapture that gas and use it, and that's becoming more and more common practice now, and I'm expecting that within Europe there will be a requirement for green completions to be in place at all facilities.

 

There is substantial work to be done with flaring and the control of flare stacks.

 

Could you speak a bit about the role of early diagnostics as they relate to multi-well pads used for oil and gas production?

 

If you've got a pump or a compressor which is working on one of these pads, any rotating equipment, then being able to provide early diagnosis of a potential problem before it affects the process is one of the most valuable things that we can offer as a company.

 

For example, some kind of bearing is starting to wear and, at best, it would cause a substantial amount of leakage of some kind, we have monitoring equipment which will beam the information back, so once we've done the diagnosis we know there's an issue we can beam the information back so you can effectively dispatch someone, rather than in an emergency situation, to proactively address that issue.

 

How can Emerson Process Management contribute to assuaging people's fear of potential risks associated with unconventional gas exploration and production? Does the company play a part in helping industry overcome some of the public opposition?

 

Emerson and others who can provide similar technologies are having a very open dialogue with those who are setting regulations and standards, that there be a requirement that we set in place the processes and procedures for applying best available techniques across the industry, because one of the things which would cause severe problems is if a company who's got a license to produce then used the lowest capital investment scenario to be able to bring production online.

 

You want to be able to ensure that the best techniques and standards are used to raise the bar to be able to give a very high degree of confidence that this facility will run as designed and is fundamentally designed to minimize emissions, heading for zero. At the same time, should something happen which is unexpected, that you've got all the safeguards and safety equipment in place to be able to manage that situation and put that facility into a safe state.

 

If we apply the best available techniques and technologies, there's a terrific opportunity in monitoring and controlling these facilities to a very high degree that would give a high degree of comfort that this is a very well controlled and managed environment where these facilities are being established.