ESG IMPACT
The ESG IMPACT segment, which was announced in January 2021, addresses key issues that are relevant to the communities in which we operate such as water conservation and aquifer protection. It also tackles larger global challenges like climate change mitigation, where we can make a significant impact as an industry.
The oil and gas industry has long acted as a catalyst for global growth and has been a foundation upon which the global economy has been built over the last century. Going forward, we believe our industry can lead and address complex global environmental challenges by adopting, adapting, improving the performance of our industry, and minimizing our collective environmental footprint through leveraging our tremendous research, engineering, and project management capabilities across the globe.
NESR continues to be focused on improving its ESG performance and on delivering services in the most effective, efficient, and sustainable manner. We introduce innovative energy solutions captured within the NESR ESG IMPACT Triangle.
The climate change mitigation product line will focus on the objective of establishing real-time monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions from oilfield operations, including wellhead, gathering stations, and gas processing facilities. In addition, it will focus on flare gas treatment and its capture and transportation to the nearest power plant or gas gathering station.
The water conservation and management product line will focus on delivering fresh water from produced water that is today either wasted or injected for reservoir pressure management or into disposal wells. Our objective is to provide field-based solutions that deliver fresh water from produced water as well as to deliver alternatives to traditional industry use of higher quality aquifer water for oilfield applications. We are currently working with Salttech SA, a water-treatment technology company based in the Netherlands, on developing several plants (25,000 to 100,000 bbl/day) to convert high salinity produced water into fresh water.
We are also working very closely with a number of MENA operators to impact several projects including high salinity produced water treatment to freshwater quality with an objective of zero liquid discharge (ZLD). The resulting fresh quality water can be used for multiple applications within the oilfield, e.g. smart water Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), crude washing to remove salt, reservoir pressure management, and drilling & completions. Such water can also be used for industrial and agricultural applications.
In the aquifer space, our focus is on providing water from previously unusable water resources due to high sulphate content in order to reduce industry reliance on high quality aquifers. We are evaluating potential plant and field capabilities with CleanTeQ, an Australian-based clean technology company, that currently operates an antimony treatment plant in Oman.
In March 2021, NESR announced its participation in the initial investment round of ICE Thermal Harvesting, an innovative geothermal technology company. With this technology, we aim to support our customers to reduce their carbon footprint by capturing geothermal energy to generate electric power. In essence, thermal energy which was previously untapped and was being dissipated into the atmosphere will now be harnessed to replace existing energy sources.