GPA Midstream’s Environmental Excellence Award recognizes GPA Midstream companies for demonstrating initiative and leadership in managing their environmental affairs in midstream sector activities and GPSA companies that develop successful, innovative environmental solutions.
Companies must apply for this project-based award by the specified deadline each year. The deadline for 2023 was June 8. Winners are announced in July of each year, and award recipients will have an opportunity to present their projects at the GPA Midstream Convention in Sept. so others may benefit from their best practices.
GPA Midstream members have awards in two categories:
1. GPA Midstream member companies classified as O1 and O2 compete for the Division 1 award.
2. All other GPA Midstream companies, including international companies and businesses that have GPA Midstream Associate memberships compete for the Division II award.
GPSA member companies compete for a single GPSA award.
DCP Midstream pioneered an industry-leading methane mapping and mitigation initiative that used airborne hyperspectral sensors to survey more than 14,000 miles of pipeline. DCP leveraged this data and incorporated advanced analytics to inform and accelerate the company’s methane reduction activities. Saudi Aramco combined environmental sustainability initiatives and innovative solutions at its Haradh Gas Plant Department to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions and advance air quality management. The project yielded significant operational efficiency enhancements while improving environmental emission rates for the facility by reducing flaring and sulfur dioxide emissions.
DCP Midstream received the Environmental Excellence Award for developing an innovative way to visualize real-time compliance status with facility air permit and regulatory requirements at 10 gas plants and 14 compressor stations in Colorado's Weld County. The solution provides ready access to facility environmental information, allowing operators to quickly respond to changing operational conditions, thus avoiding or limiting the duration of non-compliance that may occur.
The award is in recognition of MPLX’s outstanding initiative and leadership in environmental affairs for implementing the ZEVAC system, an alternative to using a flare. The company deployed it as a portable system for pigging operations in Ohio where significant reductions in emissions have already been achieved. Results show the system can reduce VOC and methane emissions from pigging operations by up to 99 percent. The findings are a significant improvement over the allowable emissions levels when using venting or flaring.
In early 2015, subsidiary ONEOK Hydrocarbon Southwest, which operates the Mont Belvieu 1 natural gas liquids fractionation facility in Texas, received a renewed permit required by the Clean Water Act, and that permit established more stringent total suspended solids permit limits. The ONEOK facility realized that a modified filtration and purification system was necessary to manage its water source from the Trinity River to comply with these new limits.
DCP Midstream was honored for a successful excess emission reduction effort at its Goldsmith Plant in the Permian Basin. A Goldsmith team investigated emissions events and found the largest were related to third party power reliability. The plant's controlled, automated shutdown technology not only greatly reduces flaring, but is transferable to other plants and gathering systems that depend on third party power for plant operations, serving as another example of sharing best practices to the benefit of all GPA Midstream members.
ONEOK Partners was honored for replacing compressors and associated equipment at the company’s Antioch compressor station, a key gathering infrastructure facility located in Antioch, Okla. The project was initiated to increase reliability of the station, minimize safety events and decrease ONEOK’s environmental footprint.
Targa Resources was honored for its Managing Reciprocating Rod Packing Emissions project. The initiative was part of an overall operational goal to reduce plant emissions, maintenance downtime and improve fuel efficiency. Oxy USA was awarded for its Slaughter Gas Plant Sulfur Recovery Unit Shutdown project. The goal was a total elimination of emissions from the SRU during normal operation and periods of maintenance, startup and shutdown.
MarkWest Liberty Bluestone was honored for its facility modification projects that incorporated environmental best management practices and construction design standards to their 2012 acquisitions of the Bluestone and Sarsen natural gas processing facilities and a compressor station in Butler County, Pa. Through installation of vapor recovery units and air fuel ratio emission controls on engines, and the addition of acoustical sound barrier dens at the Bluestone facility, emissions and noise reductions were achieved. Saudi Arabian Oil Co. earned the distinction for a Flare Gas Recovery System, the first of its kind among Saudi Aramco facilities, initiated at its Shedgum Gas Plant in the eastern region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The installation of three liquid seal drums for each of the existing flare gas, and two identical compression trains to recycle the flared gases to the plant sour gas header for further processing, resulted in a total flare reduction of 6 million standard cubic feet per day.
DCP Midstream was honored for a project to proactively and voluntarily reduce air emissions from several reciprocating internal combustion engines (RICE). To achieve the emissions reduction, older units were replaced, catalyst were added and/or upgraded, and units were removed from service. The primary objectives of these projects were to reduce emissions at facilities below Title V thresholds to reduce regulatory burden, improve operational reliability, and improve fuel efficiency.
DCP Midstream was awarded for a project at the Northrup Booster in Ochiitree Country, Texas, to innovatively reduce VOC flash emissions. The project was part of a larger effort to consolidate the permitting of a recently purchased facility with an existing DCP facility. Bahrain National Oil Co. received the honor for implementing a project for continuously improving the environment by reducing nitrogen oxide levels in the exhaust emissions of five gas turbines in a phased manner by upgrading the combustion chambers of the gas turbine by installing “Lean Head End” combustion liners.
DCP Midstream was honored for its Phytoremediation Project, which not only had minimal impact on operations but was also low maintenance and cost effective. The TreeWell solution was implemented by DCP’s contractor, TRC Solutions, using trees to mitigate hydrocarbon and metals impacts in groundwater from 12 to 35 ft below ground surface. DCP Midstream used this system at two compressor stations in South Texas.
Enogex was honored for its Wetumka Gas Processing Facility Emissions Reduction Project. The project voluntarily reduced Hazardous Air Pollutant emissions and criteria pollutant emissions. The reduction was achieved through the installation of add-on control technology and selective replacement of natural gas-fired compressor engines. The Project resulted in a facility-wide criteria pollutant emissions reduction of 40% and a formaldehyde emissions reduction of 55%.
