This project is funded under the Inflation Reduction Act through its Methane Emissions Reduction Program (MERP), which provides US$1.36 billion in financial and technical assistance to accelerate methane and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in the oil and natural gas sector. In a news release dated 20 December 2024, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Department of Energy (DOE) announced US$850 million in funding specifically for reducing, monitoring, measuring, and quantifying methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
The addition of methane monitoring to Zefiro's core services complements its existing business activities in the areas of environmental remediation and the origination of institutional-grade carbon emission offsets. Zefiro's field personnel meet several key requirements for methane emission measurement work including a minimum 480 hours of field experience in screening, measurement, and quantification in accordance with US DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) standards.
Zefiro Interim Chief Executive Officer Catherine Flax commented, "Methane monitoring is something that we were already doing at Zefiro as part of our due diligence in originating carbon offsets, in order to quantify the amount of emissions that are being abated as the result of a given well remediation project. However, performing methane monitoring as a standalone revenue-generating service unlocks an opportunity for us to drive value from tasks that we would otherwise ordinarily be performing using existing equipment and crew members."
Ms. Flax continued, "What makes methane monitoring especially attractive from a business perspective is that it is asset-light and operationally efficient. To elaborate, there are very low CapEx and OpEx burdens, meaning that this type of work tends to be profitable from the very beginning, and it is highly scalable as more US states begin launching their MERP initiatives using funding from the Inflation Reduction Act. Out of the twenty-seven states which have documented unplugged orphaned oil/gas wells, Zefiro currently has operations in five of these states (Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Oklahoma), which means there is significant upward potential for us to capture business in new markets for methane monitoring as demand for it continues to increase."
Image: through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, Zefiro will conduct pre and post-plugging measurements for an allotment of well sites in West Virginia in order to quantify the amount of methane emissions removed from the plugging of each well
Read the latest issue of Oilfield Technology magazine for upstream news, project stories, industry insight and technical articles.
Oilfield Technology’s May/June 2025 issue
The May/June 2025 issue of Oilfield Technology includes articles on reducing methane emissions, smart infrared technology, the challenge of torsional vibrations, flow control, upstream sensing, and water treatment.
