Low-quality methane emissions data is bad for several parts of your business. Inaccurate and imprecise data doesn’t just mean missed leaks. It means higher repair costs and lost opportunities for recapturing valuable gas.
The good news? There is a way to turn these hidden costs into savings.
By adopting advanced measurement technologies that are more effective, you can significantly improve data accuracy, reduce unnecessary expenses, and even find new revenue opportunities when you keep gas in the pipes.
In this blog, we'll share how poor data quality can impact your financial outcomes and find out how investing in better emissions monitoring technology can yield significant cost savings, and enhance operational efficiency.
Ultimately, these improvements will boost your bottom line and contribute to genuine reductions in emissions, helping your organization meet its sustainability goals.
Let’s dive in.
Recapturing gas can create quite a boon to your bottom line. With natural gas prices around $2.50/MMBtu (as of Fall 2024), fixing leaks and keeping gas in the pipeline isn’t just about sustainability—it’s good for business.
Here’s the breakdown: at $2.50 per 1,000 scf (Mcf), that comes out to around $120 per ton of natural gas.
Let’s see how this plays out with a methane emissions monitoring program using optical gas imaging (OGI), compared with an aerial Gas Mapping LiDAR (GML) methane emissions monitoring program.
With quarterly OGI scanning, the potential to reduce emissions is about 8 tons per year per site. Multiply that by the value of gas ($120/ton), and you get about $961 worth of gas savings per year due to the recaptured gas if all leaks are fixed. Please note, however, this doesn’t account for the costs incurred using OGI for leak detection.
The operating costs come out to about $4,204 per year, per site. That includes scanning, repairs, and related expenses like planning and recordkeeping (based on EPA’s estimates). Subtract the gas recapture savings, and you’re still left with a net cost of $3,243 per site annually.
When you break that down by the amount of emissions reduced (8 tons per year), that’s a cost of $405 per ton.
In short:
Now, let’s see how an alternative monitoring program using more efficient advanced technology stacks up.
When using aerial GML scans, the potential emissions reduction is much higher—about 35.4 tons per year, per site. Using the same recaptured gas value based on a natural gas price of $2.50/MMBtu $120/ton, this equals $4,255 worth of recaptured gas annually.
With lower gross operating costs of $3,433 per site, that yields a net revenue of $821 per site, annually. When normalized by the amount of emissions reduced (35.4 tons per year), that’s a revenue of $23.18 per ton of emissions reduced.
In short:
You read that right! With aerial GML monitoring, operators can actually make money by fixing detected leaks and keeping that gas in the system.
With bi-monthly aerial GML scanning, revenue per ton is over $23 of emissions reduced per year. Compare that to using just quarterly OGI scans, where operators spend an estimated average of $405 per ton of emissions reduced. That’s a difference of over $428 per ton between the two options, and putting money in the bank while you reduce emissions!