The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) on Wednesday said it has renewed its agreement with TotalEnergies to extend the deployment of the Airborne Ultralight Spectrometer for Environmental Applications (AUSEA) for another 24 months.
Andy Odeh, the chief corporate communications officer of NNPC Ltd, in a statement, said the technology is for the detection, measurement, and reduction of methane and carbon emissions across its upstream operations.
The agreement was signed on Wednesday at NNPC Towers in Abuja. NNPC Ltd’s Executive Vice President, Upstream, Udy Ntia, signed for NNPC while TotalEnergies Country Chair and Managing Director, Matthieu Bouyer, signed for TotalEnergies.
Mr Odeh said the agreement, which is aimed at helping NNPC Ltd meet its gas flare reduction obligation in keeping with its Oil & Gas Decarbonisation Charter (OGDC) commitments, Oil & Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) 2.0 participation and near-zero methane ambition by 2030, is a follow-up on an earlier agreement signed in 2023 for the adoption of the AUSEA technology.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr Ntia expressed satisfaction with the first phase of the deployment of the technology, stressing that he would like to see it scaled across more assets.
“Today’s signing represents a practical step in NNPC Limited’s journey to build a credible, transparent and action-oriented decarbonisation programme.
“Through the AUSEA initiative, we are strengthening our ability to detect, quantify and prioritise methane abatement opportunities using advanced measurement technology,” he said.
He called for the institutionalisation of progress reporting, in line with compliance requirements and the possibility of leveraging the transfer of the AUSEA technology.
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On his part, TotalEnergies’ Senior Vice President, Africa, Mike Sangster, expressed satisfaction with the cooperation his company has enjoyed from NNPC over the years.
He stressed that TotalEnergies was the first oil-producing company in Nigeria to end gas flaring in all its assets and that the AUSEA technology was instrumental to that feat, even as the company looks forward to near-zero methane emissions by 2030.
AUSEA is a drone-based technology developed by TotalEnergies in partnership with the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Reims.
It helps in the identification of unaccounted emission sources, the establishment of a basis for querying and improving current emission reporting processes, the provision of data to review operational systems and implement corrective actions, as well as the estimation of flare combustion efficiency.
