Funding comes thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act Hickenlooper helped pass into law
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper applauded news that Colorado-based LongPath Technologies received a conditional commitment from the Department of Energy for up to $189 million in loan guarantees to support the fabrication and installation of a real time methane emissions monitoring network across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, and New Mexico. The funding comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, which Hickenlooper helped pass into law.
As governor, Hickenlooper brought together environmentalists and the oil industry to create the world’s first methane regulations. Those regulations were used by President Obama as a model for national standards which in turn were used as a basis for the international methane pledge in 2021.
“As governor, we set the first standards for limiting methane emissions in the world,” said Hickenlooper. “Now, Colorado innovators like LongPath are building on that by installing an interstate methane emissions monitoring network – made possible by our Inflation Reduction Act!”
The announcement comes from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) for an up to $189 million loan guarantee to support the fabrication and installation of a real time methane emissions monitoring network in the Permian, Denver-Julesburg, and Anadarko oil and gas production basins. LongPath’s Active Emissions Overwatch System project aims to scale to cover 25 million acres of land with large-area remote methane monitors, providing emissions detection, location, and quantification services for tens of thousands of oil and gas sites through a subscription service.
If finalized, the network is expected to prevent methane emissions equivalent to at least six million tons of carbon dioxide annually— equivalent to 1.3 million gasoline powered vehicles – by enabling subscribers to identify and respond to methane leaks quickly. At its peak, the project is anticipated to create an estimated 35 construction jobs and 266 operations jobs for regional workers, including trained experts to install and maintain the equipment, and provide competitive benefits. LongPath also provides internship opportunities with the University of Colorado to engage the future generation in technology-based climate solutions.
Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, occur across the oil and gas sector. Leaks during oil and gas production and compression, which are difficult to identify across vast production areas, are a major source of U.S. methane emissions. The longer leaks go undetected, the more planet-warming greenhouse gas enters the atmosphere. Today, monitoring is typically conducted via flyovers or using methods such as optical gas imaging cameras, which can leave major gaps in emissions monitoring and lead to methane leaks potentially going unnoticed for weeks or months, or undetected entirely. This is particularly true because emissions are intermittent—only continuous monitoring can reliably detect these kinds of emission sources.
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