Published: 03/01/2024
Published: 03/01/2024
Methane leaks are a significant component of greenhouse gas emissions and a global problem for the oil and gas industry. Emissions occur from a wide variety of sites with no discernable patterns, requiring methodologies to frequently monitor these releases throughout the entire production chain. To cost-effectively monitor widely dispersed well pads, we developed a methane point instrument to be deployed at facilities and connected to a cloud-based interpretation platform that provides real-time continuous monitoring in all weather conditions. The methane sensor is calibrated with machine learning methods of Gaussian process regression and the results are compared with artificial neural networks. A machine learning approach incorporates environmental effects into the sensor response and achieves the accuracies required for methane emissions monitoring with a small number of parameters.