The meeting held on November 5th is being used as the basis to develop the future direction. If you did not make the meeting and would like to participate in the decision making process, please contact a member of the EFD management team listed below. The goal of the future direction of the EFD Program is to further advance the knowledge and development of environmentally friendly oil and gas activities. The program enables a dialogue between the energy industry, environmental organizations and appropriate government agencies and legislators.
The program is dedicated to the development and integration of low-impact technology and systems for unconventional natural gas resources. To reduce the environmental footprint of operations, the program will incorporate new methods in (1) logistics (site access), (2) rig/site area, (3) alternative power options, and (4) waste management. The program is a partnership of the Houston Advanced Research Center, Texas A&M Look College of Engineering Petroleum Engineering Department, Sam Houston State University, University of Arkansas, the University of Colorado and TerraPlatforms, L.L.C.
The program provides a comprehensive technology transfer effort that includes outreach to industry, NGO's, government officals and the general public. In addition, a scorecard system is being developed to recognize those companies who employ the most applicable technologies and systems that minimize the environmental tradeoffs of oil and gas operations in sensitive ecosystems.
The program is based on work performed by an Environmentally Friendly Drilling Research Consortium created in 2005 in which technology was identified for the natural gas industry to incorporate into “low environmental footprint” drilling and production systems. The program will perform detailed engineering and develop designs for environmentally friendly systems suitable for producing unconventional natural gas resources in environmentally sensitive ecosystems. In addition, Most Applicable Technologies (MAT's) will be identified, documented and incorporated into a database and web-based system for Rocky Mountain operations. Case studies of technology applications will be developed based on the detailed engineering studies. The program includes the development and implementation of an environmental scorecard to measure the tradeoffs.
Links of interest include:
University of Colorado MAT project: http://www.colorado.edu/law/centers/nrlc/projects/bmpDemo/index.htm
University of Arkansas Site Planning Project: http://lingo.cast.uark.edu/LINGOPUBLIC
contacts:
David Burnett, Texas A&M University, burnett@pe.tamu.edu
Rich Haut, Houston Advanced Research Center, rhaut@harc.edu
Tom Williams, TerraPlatforms, L.L.C., twilliams@afsolutions.com
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Future Direction of the EFD Program |