Unnecessary steam leaks in the oil and gas industry are damaging the planet. Stopping this would have the equivalent impact of planting a rain forest of 100 million trees. Read AES Engineering Managing Director Chris Rea’s open letter to industry executives and view General Manager Jim Hamilton’s explanatory video.
Open Letter to the Oil & Gas Industry
Dear Senior Executive,
Leaking steam turbines emit two million tonnes of CO2 each year, completely unnecessarily.
I believe that you will want to do the right thing when you understand the opportunity to make even more money and collectively stop the unnecessary emissions of two million tonnes of CO2 each year into the atmosphere. I set up Betterworld.Solutions as a philanthropic best practice sharing organisation because I believe that there needs to be a better conduit to bring environmental projects to business leaders, who will act when they are aware of the opportunity.
Please Stop the Steam!
Around 40,000 poorly sealed general purpose steam turbines are global workhorses of the Oil and Gas industry. Ninety-nine percent of them continue to leak around 170 tonnes of steam per turbine per year, when this figure could be reduced close to zero. That has a combined carbon footprint of two million tonnes of CO2e – the equivalent of a rain forest of 100 million trees. Since wasted steam is costly, an industry-wide saving of more than $450 million is there for the taking.
We know that big companies in your industry are printing money right now and we have no objection to that as there have been lean decades for returns as well. But we do not believe that you want to unnecessarily hurt the environment and that you would collectively be more than willing to invest a very small amount to save two million tonnes of CO2 each year especially as the ROI would be six months on average and you have the money to invest at this part of the business cycle.
At AESSEAL®, we have worked with a UK customer to seal 30 turbines out of an estimated 1,000 general purpose steam turbines in their worldwide fleet. The case is proven, solutions are out there and nothing happens. Why? I believe you just do not know and when you do you will act and you will do so before a legislator takes notice, or you get bad press.
At AESSEAL®, it feels like we are sticking our thumb in the dyke of a global problem and are drowning in an attitude of general indifference to climate change, but it is probably simpler than that. Our company has been campaigning on this issue, and where we are not on your supplier list we accept this will likely never happen. So, if you don’t already work with our global team of reliability experts, please go to your current seal supplier - Eagle Burgmann, John Crane or Flowserve who serve most of the Oil and Gas industry. They have similar technology (let’s be honest, solutions have been around for decades).
Ask yourself and them some hard questions like – “why are we allowing this to continue to happen?”
Finally, I know you will not want to miss an opportunity to do the right thing for the environment and make more money, now that you know the opportunity exists. Please make my day and help save the world for our children and grandchildren.
Best regards
Chris Rea, CBE, DL, BSc, CEng, HonFIMechE
Managing Director
On behalf of AES Engineering Ltd. Group of Companies
