Onboard Dynamics

Unique, Patented Natural Gas Compression Technology for Driving Down Emissions

Renewable Natural Gas

The European Union Elevates the Essential Role of Natural Gas

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Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany
Nordstream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany

In our last blog posting, we discussed the important role of natural gas in achieving national de-carbonization goals in the US. A few days ago, EU authorities issued a statement making this same point for European countries. Part of its statement is “there is a role for natural gas and nuclear as a means to facilitate the transition towards a predominantly renewable-based future.” This position sets the stage to allow investments in natural gas development and infrastructure to be classified as “sustainable investments” under policies that will guide future energy investments within the EU.

Part of the back story on this new EU position is the fact that Europe is facing a winter of energy insecurity:  much higher energy prices and, at the same time, potential energy shortages. A January 4, 2022, article in Bloomberg Businessweek, “Europe Sleepwalked into an Energy Crisis That Could Last Years”, describes the complex of forces that has contributed to this tense situation. In recent years, developers underinvested in new natural gas projects out of concern that these investments would become “stranded” by evolving EU investment criteria and environmental regulations. Imports of LNG (primarily from the US) were tight because other countries, especially those in Asia, were also competing for these supplies to meet growing demand as economies emerged from pandemic shutdowns. Russian gas supplier Gazprom started to limit supplies to Europe, some would say to force agreement (over resistance from the US) to complete the new $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany.

These supply constraints have had two damaging results: gas prices are up 400% from the previous year and gas in storage for winter use is down to 56% of capacity (down 15% from normal). These forces are in play at the same time that Germany has shut down three of its remaining six nuclear powerplants (the three remaining plants will be shut by the end of 2022), thereby increasing the need for natural gas (or dirty lignite coal) right in time for the coldest months of the year.

Preventing similar shortfalls in the US will be a challenge for us also unless we fully understand and capitalize on the economic and environmental benefits of having a robust, reliable gas pipeline infrastructure. We’ll be exploring the issues and opportunities of this challenge in the months ahead so that we do not find ourselves facing the same challenges as Europe does today.

Natural gas: villain or savior?

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Those of us working in the natural gas ecosystem have recently seen numerous articles calling for the elimination of natural gas production, transport, and use in our country because it is not “clean enough”. This is partly due to methane releases from leaks and the maintenance projects that repair such leaks. At the same time, there is a growing awareness by many others that to achieve our national goal of being “carbon neutral” by 2050, we must have a robust, leak-free gas distribution system to:

  • Compliment and supplement renewable energy sources
  • Eliminate coal use
  • Exploit new forms of zero-carbon and carbon-negative gases, such as hydrogen and renewable natural gas

An excellent report documenting this essential role of our gas distribution system was published in late April, 2021 by the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, entitled Investing in the US Natural Gas Pipeline System to Support Net-Zero Targets. The essential role of our natural gas distribution system is summarized by a brief statement from its executive summary:

Studies by energy agencies, universities, and the industry that model future US natural gas consumption consistently show continued use of natural gas for at least the next 30 years, even in scenarios where the country achieves net-zero targets by midcentury. There is no quick replacement for gas in the US energy mix. And for many of the needs natural gas currently meets, the eventual replacement may be zero-carbon gaseous fuels (e.g., hydrogen, biogas). These fuels may play a significant role in supporting reliability and making the energy transition more affordable—but they, too, will require a pipeline network for efficient delivery to markets and end-users.

As we say in our internal discussions, if the plumbing in your house has leaks, you do not stop using water. You fix the leaks. Onboard Dynamics has introduced the GoVAC™ Flex pipeline evacuation system as a novel tool to aid in fixing such natural gas pipeline leaks. New technologies such as ours, combined with improved remote sensing tools, will ensure that natural gas, and the pipelines that deliver it, will be available to help meet our challenging national climate goals.

Onboard Dynamics to Exhibit the GoVAC™ Flex at The 2021 Natural Gas Conference and Expo

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Booth #400

Charlotte, North Carolina | Oct 17 – 20, 2021

The GoVAC™ Flex will be on full display during the conference to give viewers a hands-on experience of the product. Seeing the unit in real life allows booth visitors to get a feel for the size of the system and how compact it is. Staff will also be available to answer questions about how the unit works and why it is a key part of reducing GHG emissions during natural gas pipeline maintenance. 

About the GoVAC™ Flex

The GoVAC™ Flex is a revolutionary tool for minimizing methane releases during pipeline blowdowns. It is powered by a small portion of the gas being recovered, so no external power is required. Its compact size facilitates transport and positioning at job sites. 

Remote monitoring ensures reliable operation and responsive service. State-of-the-art telemetry provides accurate and detailed environmental reporting. 

Learn more about the GoVAC™ Flex >>

Onboard Dynamics will be participating in the SGA Learning Lab

Titled “Utilizing the GoVAC Flex System to minimize GHG during routine pipeline operations and maintenance”. It will be held in room W207 AB from 9:15 to 11:30 am on October 18th. 

Geared towards natural gas pipeline operators, this learning lab will demonstrate the functionality of the GoVAC and illustrate its value proposition for reducing GHG emissions and achieving ESG goals. Utilizing presentations, videos, research, insight into environmental regulation, and real environmental and performance data from case studies of field demonstration projects at several natural gas utilities, viewers will gain a better understanding as to why the GoVAC Flex System is the pipeline evacuation system that sets itself apart in performance and emissions reductions. 

In this lab, visitors will: 

  • Get an understanding of the timeliness of the GoVAC in enabling pipeline operators to minimize venting and flaring before impending regulation. 
  • See how the environmental reporting capabilities of the GoVAC enable natural gas operators to document their progress towards the ESG goal. 
  • Learn the advantages of a fully integrated pipeline evacuation system that requires no external power source in its operation.

The Natural Gas Conference & Expo is an in-person event that will feature tracks with over 150 informative sessions.

Onboard Dynamics Presentation at Enercom’s Oil and Gas Conference

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Rita Hansen, CEO, and Co-founder of Onboard Dynamics gives a presentation about the unique, mobile, modular products that Onboard Dynamics offers. Whether they are deployed at a remote pipeline job site, in the field, or at a fleet yard, the product solutions can accept any low-pressure natural gas or a renewable natural gas source and then compress or move this natural gas for responsible use. And, there is no need for any external power source to operate.

goVAC evacuating a pipeline

The presentation focuses on the recently launched pipeline evacuation unit, the GoVAC™ Flex, and the continued progress the company has made driving down emissions in the cleantech industry.

 

There are challenges facing the natural gas industry and Onboard Dynamics provides solutions that simplify the capture, compression, and movement of natural gas. This enables customers to receive economic value while achieving environmental goals.

This video covers the results of natural gas vessel-to-vessel transfer, results of pipe-to-pipe transfer abilities, and pipe-to-tube trailer transfer abilities of the GoVAC Flex. 

Watch the full presentation here to learn more:  

Download the presentation: 

About the Enercom Oil and Gas Conference

EnerCom’s The Oil & Gas Conference® offers investment professionals the opportunity to listen to the world’s key senior management teams present their growth plans and provides industry professionals a venue to learn about important energy topics affecting the global oil and gas industry. The 2018 edition of EnerCom’s The Oil & Gas Conference® hosted 100+ presenting companies with operations spanning more than 40 countries and six continents. Enterprise Values of the 2019 presenters will range from approximately $9 million to $150 billion

More than 2,000 institutional and hedge fund investors, energy research analysts, retail brokers, trust officers, high net worth investors, investment bankers, and energy industry professionals gather in Denver each year for the unique opportunity to meet and discuss future industry plans, growth opportunities, and economic trends that are impacting the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. EnerCom works with presenting company management teams arranging one-on-one meetings with the attending institutional investors and research analysts during the Conference.

The Untapped Opportunity of Smaller Sources of Methane

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The Untapped Opportunity of Smaller Sources of Methane

Most who have studied the challenges of a clean, low-carbon, and economical energy supply system agree that methane, produced either from wells or bio-sources (e.g., dairies, landfills, and water treatment plants), will play essential role in the decades ahead. A key challenge in realizing this opportunity is the fact that many of these diverse  methane supplies are from sources whose production rates are so low that it can be cost-prohibitive to provide two essential steps for commercial use:

  • Cleanup and conditioning of the raw methane mixture from either a well or bio-source. Methane from many important sources can contain various impurities, such as moisture, CO2, nitrogen, H2S, etc. These impurities need to be removed to produce fuel-grade methane that can be transported in a cost effective manner.  A variety of proven technologies exist to remove these impurities, however most are costly at smaller scales.

  • Transportation of clean methane to a viable market. When the volume of methane is large enough and/or the transport distances long enough, pipelines are a cost effective, safe, and clean way to transport methane. But when a pipeline cannot be justified, transportation of methane to market can be problematic due to its low energy density.  Again, numerous non-pipeline options exist, such as compressing the methane into CNG, cooling it into LNG, or converting it into a liquid fuel (such as methanol or dimethyl ether (DME)). Again, the challenge with these processes is their cost at modest scale.

Two examples will illustrate the size of this opportunity if the challenge of scale for cleaning and transport could be resolved:

Dairies

1000 cows can produce 50 to 100 mscf/day of RNG

There are 42,000 dairies in the US, while the RNG Coalition reports that less than 40 dairies produce RNG (renewable natural gas, or clean methane). Current dairy RNG projects will typically have over 10,000 cows, while the average dairy has only 187 cows. A dairy with 1000 cows could produce between 50 and 100 mscf/day of RNG. From these numbers, one can see that there would be an opportunity for thousands of systems to recover RNG from dairy farms alone, if these systems could be made cost effective at smaller scale.

Oil and Gas Wells

In 2017 646,000 mscf/day of methane was vented or flared from oil producing wells.

According to the EIA, at the end of 2017, there were 991,000 producing oil and gas wells in the US. In this same year, 236,000 million scf (646,000 mscf/day) of methane was vented or flared from producing wells, largely because it was not cost effective to clean and transport methane from the smaller and more remote wells. Worldwide venting and flaring has been estimated to be about 4 times greater than in the US, largely due to less stringent environmental laws outside the US.

These numbers suggest that there is both a business opportunity and an environmental need for thousands, if not tens of thousands (depending on the achieved cost), of modest scale systems that can clean and make available for transport distributed sources of geological and bio-derived methane. The companies that develop such systems will see strong success in the coming years.