MORGANTOWN – Northeast Natural Energy has taken another step forward in its quest to produce clean, green energy.
Northeast – with offices in Morgantown and Charleston – has teamed with Kathairos Solutions to reduce greenhouse methane emissions from its well sites.
Well site operations employ various pneumatic devices, including valves. The valves and other devices are actuated – opened and closed – using gas pressure from methane at the well site.
About 40% of methane emissions from the energy industry are from pneumatic devices, including valves, Kathairos President and CEO Dick Brown told The Dominion Post. “We change the energy that drives the valves.”
Kathairos is doing this with liquid nitrogen. A company builds cryogenic tanks for them – picture something that looks like an oversized, shiny chrome water heater. They hold liquid nitrogen stored at -320 degrees Fahrenheit.
At the well site, the liquid is vaporized into a pressurized gas that’s delivered to actuate the valves and other devices. So, the producer can turn off the methane and use the nitrogen. Nitrogen is drawn from the air, he said, and just returns to the air, eliminating greenhouse emissions.
Kathairos got its start in West Virginia, Brown said, on a couple XTO well pads in 2022. The trial was successful and XTO deployed the systems across all of its Marcellus pads in 2023. Now, 19 operators, including Northeast, are using the system.
Northeast is particularly impressive, he said. “They’re very focused on their environmental standards. Being able to deploy our systems has helped them reduce their greenhouse gas intensity by 41% year over year.”
Andy Travis, Northeast’s Environment, Health & Safety manager, said they first tried the Kathairos system on their Mepco pad in 2022, liked it and moved forward putting it on all their infrastructure. During the first quarter of this year, they completed installation on their last Marcellus pad.
Across all their operations, he said, Northeast is actuating all of its pneumatic devices with either liquid nitrogen or air, altogether eliminating methane use.
Travis said Northeast spends approximately $200,000 per year in methane mitigation expense, a portion of which is Kathairos’ nitrogen systems. The investment saves 400-500 metric tons of methane emissions every year.
“Northeast has always been focused on being a responsible operator,” he said, involved in researching and deploying clean, green technology.
The Dominion Post has reported before that Northeast has achieved certification under Equitable Origin’s EO100 Standard for Responsible Energy Development and the MiQ methane standard.
Travis said, “We’re continuing to look at other options and other sources of methane emissions. We’re not done figuring out ways to make our operations better and cleaner.”
Brown said that Marcellus operators using the Kathairos system have eliminated 31,000 total tons of methane emissions. “A real success story for the Marcellus.”
Charlie Burd, executive director of GO-WV, said Northeast and some other large horizontal production members “have made wonderful strides in becoming much more efficient in reduction of their emissions. We congratulate them for that.”
Brown said, “Eliminating the methane gas that is generated by the production of natural gas is really important, and it’s important to these operators too, particularly companies like Northeast.” That’s why many of them are ahead of the federal regulations coming into place.
Kathairos noted that more than 400,000 North American well sites require conversion to zero-methane. Brown said the industry is aiming to do this by 2029, and if companies aren’t already switching over, they’re behind. “I think there’s a will. It’s just a matter of execution now.”
Email: dbeard@dominiopost.com
