The Role of Carbon Offsetting on the road to Net Zero

Achieving Net Zero can deliver a range of business advantages– from demonstrating environmental credentials and building customer confidence in your brand, to improving staff engagement with your broader sustainability programmes. It can even deliver business growth opportunities – building resilience in supply chains, supporting growth in key markets and helping to launch new products and services. 

Companies are taking the lead by measuring, reducing and where necessary, offsetting their emissions. Some of the world’s biggest Oil & Gas Companies are taking the lead in making commitments to meet Net Zero targets. Is it about offsetting?

It is frequently stated that the road to Net Zero is one strewn with good intentions, or in this particular case, one of offset responsibilities. Many industrial processes cannot be replaced with carbon neutral methodologies. It is the case that once a full implementation of reduce, replace and manage is exhausted that the role of carbon offset becomes important. 

Can offsetting carbon emissions really tackle climate change? 

Offsetting alone is clearly not going to tackle climate change. It is simply a part of a planned strategy of carbon reduction.  But even in the best case scenario this transition will take time and in the meantime everyone will have a carbon footprint, regardless of how hard they try to reduce it.  Until we reach a zero-carbon world we need to do something about this unavoidable, residual carbon footprint. Paying to reduce an equivalent amount of carbon emissions through voluntary carbon offsetting is the most cost effective, fast and efficient way of doing this. 

Isn’t carbon offsetting is just a short term ‘stop gap measure’ for businesses to carry on emitting greenhouse gases, rather than address their carbon footprint? Businesses nearly always reduce first. In reality, nearly all businesses invest in reducing their in-house carbon footprint before considering a payment to offset what remains. Internal reduction activities frequently save money, while investing in carbon offsetting involves a financial outlay. Few businesses make this sort of investment without first getting their own house in order and being fully committed to operating sustainably. 

The alternative is doing nothing. Even if a business has done all it can to reduce its emissions it will still have a carbon footprint. Paying to offset them, is better for our environment than the alternative, which is to do nothing at all. Offsetting delivers real benefits for the environment and local communities. 

SAS MIST Process - how it helps with your waste, step-by-step.

Is carbon offsetting enough?

Offsetting is a first step in the right direction and meant to balance the scales. However, current governmental and social pressures push towards a more pro-active strategy in tackling CO2 emissions and tacking responsibility along the corporate chain. Offsetting an already reduced amount of emissions is better. To remain competitive, oil companies must demonstrate they have taken steps in transforming their operations to become as carbon neutral as possible.

SAS Environmental Services has taken this philosophy to heart. Using a combination of innovative chemistry, state-of-the-art engineering and over 40 years of cumulated experience in the industry, we help oil waste companies to reduce their oil waste through low energy processes.

Download our SAS MIST 220 to discover more.

Oil and Gas - A view on the industry status

Unprecedented Status

The oil & gas industry is in an interesting phase of its existence. The previous downturn in the oil industry in 2015 seems like yesterday to me! And here we are in a situation few would have predicted. The oil industry remains critical to the global economic engine. Some may not like that fact, but for now it is. When the great global engine slows down the oil industry is badly affected. There are some interesting things going on and each one on its own would merit serious reflection. All of them at the same time, well, that’s really making life interesting. Interesting times means there are opportunities abound.

The drop in oil demand is unprecedented. Some 10-15% reduction is extraordinary. This is causing oil prices to drop, operators to cut back spending and some smaller or older wells will be shut in.

The rise of renewable energy (exponential growth curve, we know all about that kind of growth now) and the constant reduction in costs of renewables puts pressure on oil & gas.

An Environmental Concern

A growing awareness and concern for climate change and the impact this has and will have around the world is starting to sway governments into action and is starting to make an impact on how people are going about their life. Covid-19 might have switched the focus short term, but this is an issue that won’t go away.

There is growing concern around the world on environmental issues. This may be plastics and how they remain in the environment, leaking of methane from oil and gas wells, oil sludge storage and oil spills and drilling waste being left for future generations to handle.

A Focus on Innovation

As an industry the oil industry has a long way still to go. The lock down of much of the industrialised world in the end only reduced oil demand by 10-15%.  The idea that in a short space of time the world won’t need oil and gas is unrealistic. The opportunity for the industry lies no longer in reducing day rates or laying off some more people. The world is changing and the future in the oil industry will belong to those who can bring genuine new technology, proven in the field to market quickly.

The industry has long had a reputation of being slow to take up innovation. That won’t be good enough going forward. There is competition now and a much greater focus from governments, consumers and NGOs. None of that need be an issue. The oil industry is home to amazing technology and capabilities. Becoming more efficient means lower impact on the environment as well. That is a good thing.

Taking Action…

Governments too, have a role to play. There need to be clear signals through regulation, that the environment is not an add on, not a “nice to have”. The oil industry has fuelled an enormous economic growth and most people today are better off because of it. There is however a lot of cleaning up to do. Leaving the remediation of oil industry waste to future generations or governments or the UN is no longer acceptable. The industry needs to step up if it wishes to keep its social license to operate.

Are you interested in discussing the topic forward? Connect with Mark via LinkedIn:

How Microemulsions Can Solve Your Decommissioning Problems

Decommissioning is undoubtedly a major operational and environmental challenge for operators in the North Sea and other geographic locations. Following some highly publicised decommissioning projects there is pressure on operators and their service partners to adopt the best available technology and the best environmental option wherever possible, to ensure operations are carried out in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

One of the major environmental concerns is how best to clean out heavily contaminated storage tanks in order to reduce the risk of environmental contamination during the dismantling process. There is also pressure on operators to carry out as much remediation work as possible offshore. This is so that the removal and disposal of the waste streams can be carried out on site rather than risk the regulatory consequences of transporting this type of waste back to shore. In general, the decommissioning process can be very risky business involving some serious potential hazards and many unknowns.

It is clear the cleaning operations are not simple, with structures offering little or no access it makes surveying and pre-assessment difficult, and sometimes impossible. Due to this, it is necessary to find an inventive fluid-based solution for cleaning, rather than one based on engineering alone. This is where SAS-ES come in with our response to the problem... Microemulsion cleaning technology.

Our aqueous-based and water-soluble cleaning product range has been proven in the field and demonstrated as one of the most effective forms of cleaning solution available to the upstream oil and gas sector. It has already been successfully used for wellbore cleanup and surface/solids cleaning applications. 

This chemical product range boasts many advantages, being safe to handle with all products classified as readily biodegradable and non-hazardous for transport. The waste produced from this cleaning operation can also be minimised on site and treated in a straightforward manner in order to produce clean solids recovered, clean water for disposal and recovered organic phases for recycling/reuse.

Typically, hazardous oil contaminated waste volumes have been reduced by 70-100% through the implementation of this technology. We'll take that as a success!

Learn more about microemulsions by having a look at our other blog posts on the topic!