Constructed in 2015, Shell Canada designed its B.C. Saturn Natural Gas Processing Plant to run on hydroelectricity instead of the standard practice of using natural gas to operate the plant. As a result, direct emissions from the plant are about 90 per cent lower then would have been emitted if the plant operated on natural gas, representing 150,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Also in B.C., Shell Canada successfully brought the first ‘Generation 4’ multi-well pad on stream in January 2018 at Groundbirch. This advanced well pad design utilizes zero-bleed electric valve actuators (the mechanism that opens and closes a valve) to eliminate the methane emissions that typically come from natural gas driven actuators. This new pad design reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 90 per cent, the equivalent of taking more than 40 cars off the road for every well using this new technology. Generation 4 will be Shell Canada’s standard moving forward.
