Apache Corp. agreed on March 7 to expand its partnership with LongPath Technologies Inc. for continuous methane emissions monitoring in the Permian Basin.

“At Apache, we are committed to reducing emissions and were looking for a technology that provided real-time monitoring and volume quantifications,” Jessica Jackson, vice president of environment, health and safety, commented in a company release. “LongPath’s technology provides our teams with the data needed to achieve meaningful emissions reductions while meeting global energy needs in more innovative and sustainable ways.”

A subsidiary of Houston-based APA Corp., Apache has been operating in the Permian Basin of West Texas and southeast New Mexico since the 1990s. As of year-end 2020, the company had more than 7,000 wells covering a gross acreage position of 4.9 million acres in the Permian, according to its website.

Last month, APA unveiled a long-term incentive compensation ESG goal to reduce CO₂ emissions, of which methane is a focal point, by 1 million tonnes annually from projects by 2024. 

With the planned expansion announced March 7, LongPath will provide real-time monitoring for approximately 60 Apache facilities across multiple areas of the Permian Basin.

“We are thrilled to be able to continue what has been a rewarding partnership on both sides,” LongPath CEO Ian Dickinson commented in the release. “In Apache, we have partner who has focused on how to make continuous monitoring actionable and efficient.”

Apache adopted the LongPath system last Fall with the commissioning of several dozen sites, leading to reductions in emissions, the company release said. 

LongPath Technologies’ networked monitoring solution provides wide-area coverage of many individual facilities with a single laser system.

The laser system is placed in a central location, and eye-safe light is sent out over multi-mile pathways through the air. Small mirrors on monitored sites allow for quantified emission volumes for each site to be reported in real-time.

“The Apache team’s emissions mitigation workflow represents a viable long-term solution for ingesting real-time emissions data and getting root cause analysis and solutions down to a science,” Dickinson added. “We are looking forward to entering into this next phase with Apache.”