ExxonMobil partners to develop methane monitoring platform

US major ExxonMobil has partnered with global pollution monitoring firm Scepter and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a data analytics platform to characterise and quantify methane emissions from various monitoring platforms, they said May 16.

The initial focus will be to develop a data platform using ground-, air- and space-based technology to evaluate methane emissions in the Permian Basin. Eventually, they said, the technology could be deployed globally.

“We will be processing very large amounts of emissions data covering the most prolific oil and gas basin in the US that has made the US the world’s top energy producer,” Scepter CEO Philip Father said.

Scepter has been working with ExxonMobil to optimise sensors that low-earth orbit satellites forming a constellation by 2026 will use to enable real-time, continuous monitoring of methane emissions from oil and gas operations on a global scale. As part of this effort, the companies are conducting stratospheric balloon missions to test the technology in high-altitude conditions.

Scepter has already developed a fusion platform, but a comprehensive suite of AWS cloud services are helping to process and aggregate the large amount of data captured by the methane monitoring technology.

“Advanced AWS cloud services make it possible to rapidly synthesise and analyse information from multiple data sources, and are a perfect choice to help Scepter achieve its goal of helping customers reduce methane emissions,” said Clint Crosier, Director of Aerospace and Satellite at AWS.