Mexican state oil company Pemex postponed urgent repairs and maintenance on an important offshore platform for months, causing methane to be released into the atmosphere, according to internal documents and three sources familiar with the infrastructure.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a much more powerful driver of short-term global warming than carbon dioxide because it traps more heat in the atmosphere, ton for ton.
New data from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) International Methane Emissions Observatory showed that a problematic Pemex platform in the Gulf of Mexico had a methane emission on December 24.
Reuters previously revealed that the Zaap-C platform, one of the most important in the Gulf of Mexico, leaked for at least 25 days between January and November 2023.
The five internal documents, seen by Reuters, show for the first time that Pemex has been aware of components on the platform that could not be repaired and several other infrastructure-related deficiencies since at least June.
Pemex needs to install two new turbochargers on the platform, several pipelines, connecting infrastructure and a firewall for safety reasons, a company assessment from January shows. Turbochargers help compress the gas so it can be reinjected into the field.
A flare is intended to burn the methane component of the gas that comes to the surface during oil exploration and production.
The Pemex documents include internal proposals for changes, infrastructure plans and extracts from a database detailing the composition of the gas. None have been reported previously.
Pemex, responsible for the infrastructure, has denied these large methane leaks on the platform in the past. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The president’s office, the Ministry of Energy, the oil regulator and the environmental regulator also did not respond.
Engineers have repeatedly urged Pemex to replace defective parts and make other urgent repairs, the three sources said, adding that other parts of the Gulf of Mexico infrastructure also lack maintenance.
The sources – all of them engineers – said the faulty infrastructure remains in operation and that the January assessment still indicates it needs replacements and repairs, more than six months after the problems were highlighted in reports seen by Reuters.
Execution of the works would take about three months, one of the sources said, adding that it would also mean stopping at least part of production.
Mexico already had notification of leaks
Last month, Reuters revealed that a UN agency had notified Mexico of repeated methane leaks from the platform.
In recent years, scientists around the world have joined the dots on flares and methane emissions, showing that once a flare goes out – and production does not stop – large volumes of methane are almost always released into the atmosphere. methane.
“This is something we’ve recorded evidence of in different parts of the world,” said Daniel Zavala, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund who has extensively researched emissions in Mexico.
“It was easy for the operators to say: if you don’t see it burning, it means there’s no gas coming out,” Zavala said. “Until recently, we had no way to check it.”
When the burner is working as intended, Zaap-C burns about 300 million cubic feet of gas a day, according to one of the sources.
Reuters reviewed internal Pemex data showing that 17 percent of this gas is pure methane and 73 percent is nitrogen, a harmless gas that is abundant in the atmosphere. The rest is made up of other gases and impurities.
Zavala said that with such large volumes of gas, even the relatively low percentage of methane was problematic for both the environment and the potential safety of workers.
Pemex employs about 300 workers on the Zaap-C platform alone, and lingering methane could cause fires and explosions.
Infrastructure to burn methane from gas brought to the surface as part of oil production was initially implemented as an industrial safety measure, long before the environmental impact of the greenhouse gas was widely known.
In the Gulf of Mexico, Pemex has long flared gas or reinjected it into fields, a way to recover more oil and compensate for lower production as it is depleted.
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Pemex has been reluctant to make significant investments in infrastructure related to old fields, three other sources working in the company’s exploration and production arm and a regulator source said.
Stopping production at the world’s most indebted energy company would be problematic, sources said, because it would affect production and lead Pemex to miss goals set by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who seeks to make the country self-sufficient in energy.
2024-03-22 13:05:01
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