Kananaskis Country is a perfect place to get away from the daily grind. The Rocky Mountain location serves as an ideal spot for “retreats,” where routine work chores melt away and the focus can shift to big-picture issues.

More than 100 participants flocked to a lodge in this scenic valley west of Calgary for a highly practical event with green industry overtones, a “fuel gas best management practices workshop.” Held last fall, the event was an intense three days of education for plant operators or field personnel who run and maintain gas-processing plants or other energy production facilities.

Credit for arranging the gathering goes mostly to the Canadian Environmental Technology Advancement Corporation (CETAC-West). The not-for-profit company has organized five sessions since 2002 to concentrate on implementing ways to conserve natural gas used as fuel at processing plants and other industry installations. The effort is part of a CETAC-West program called eco-efficiency, funded in part by the federal and provincial governments.

The events initially aroused skepticism or suspicion in government, regulatory and industry circles. CETAC-West, led by founding president Joe Lukacs, seemed to infer that the plants were getting a free ride because they do not pay royalties on gas used to extract, move and process production. Furthermore, the traditional arrangement provided little or no incentive for industry to conserve gas or even track how much is used for plant fuel.

As a prominent industry veteran accustomed to dealing with engineers, Lukacs knew he had to prove CETAC-West’s case. A team of experts conducted audits of sample field operations, particularly gas-processing plants.

The investigations identified potential average fuel gas savings of 15 per cent to 20 per cent. The evidence suggested a valuable conservation reward was waiting to be collected by improving operations at all of Alberta’s 50 large plants for processing “sour” gas steeped in hydrogen sulphide, hundreds more plants for “sweet” production free of the hazardous impurity, and multiple other field operations.

Even if the industry only makes initial savings of 10 per cent of the natural gas now used as plant fuel – a target CETAC-West describes as easily achievable – that prize totals an estimated $300 million annually. The calculation uses conservative economic projections.

The eco-efficiency program also points out that such high initial savings are attainable through no- or minimal-cost adjustments, without capital outlays for equipment. In many cases, the workshops show prospects for annual savings far greater than 10 per cent.

For some industry sites, operational changes and investments could reap annual fuel gas savings in the order of 50 per cent or even more. In at least one common part of production plants, pneumatic measurement and control devices, it is conceivable to stop relying on fuel gas entirely.

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