The ageing process: carbon emissions and asset maturity

Following the Paris Agreement, we assess how carbon emissions evolve over field life, the variables at play and the potential impact on the upstream sector.

The carbon emissions targets set by the Paris Agreement look set to have far-reaching implications for long-term corporate strategies. As the oil and gas industry is a large energy-intensive sector of the global economy, we expect investors and other stakeholders to increase scrutiny on corporate carbon footprints and value at risk.

The agreement has the potential to have a material impact on corporate asset valuations. However, with no standardised reporting methodology agreed, the availability of asset-level carbon emissions data is limited to a subset of established petroleum provinces, including Canada, the UK and Norway.

By combining emissions data from the Norwegian Environment Agency and our own production and reserves data, we can conduct a more comprehensive assessment of the variation of intensity across field life. While all fields are unique, with production and emissions characteristics evolving over time, our analysis demonstrates a ‘typical’ relationship between emissions intensity and field maturity using Norwegian oil assets:

The general trend shows an elevated emissions intensity during production of the first 10% of reserves. This reduces as production ramps up and is flat throughout mid-life (10-50%). From 50% of production onward, the intensity of field emissions rises steadily to an average five times our baseline in the final 5% of production.

However, at the individual field level, there can be wide deviations from this trend. This is commonly due to delays in the ramp up of production, increased intensity in mid-life (with field re-development for example) or extreme intensity spikes when more than 95% of reserves are produced when production can be particularly erratic.

Mature oil and gas fields pose a number of unique challenges for operators. One potential unintended consequence of the implementation of a carbon price on upstream operations is the risk of triggering early cessation of production on already marginal mature fields.

Consequently, any carbon policy implemented on the upstream sector by governments will need to carefully balance the desire to reduce carbon emissions while avoiding the negative economic consequence associated with early shut-ins of mature oil and gas infrastructure.

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Download a complimentary copy of this report, 'Carbon emissions and asset maturity: the ageing process', which examines the changing carbon intensity of oil and gas fields as they mature, and the potential implications for both the carbon policy enacted by governments and the mix of assets that companies hold in their portfolios.

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