Williams signs deal with Coterra, Dominion Virginia for natgas certification process
Williams signed agreements with Coterra Energy and Dominion Energy Virginia last week to establish the industry’s first next generation natural gas certification process.
Williams, which owns 30,000 miles of pipeline, is leveraging block-chain secured technology via Context Labs’ Decarbonization as a Service (DaaS) platform to track emissions and provide a methane intensity certification. KPMG will perform third-party verification of the methane intensity certification.
“Williams is proud to launch the industry’s first comprehensive next gen natural gas platform to bring greater trust, transparency, and transactability to the certified gas market,” said Chad Zamarin, senior vice president of corporate strategic development for Williams. “As we look to a low-carbon energy future, Williams is committed to leading our industry with credible solutions to benefit our customers and their sustainability goals.”
The environmental attributes associated with the delivery of next gen natural gas will be registered, tracked, and retired through Context Lab’s CLEAR Path platform.
“We are thrilled to be working with Williams and its supply chain ecosystem partners to produce the energy industry’s premier end-to-end next generation natural gas certification transactions,” Dan Harple, founder and CEO of Context Labs, said.
Through its Sequent Energy Management business, Williams is building a marketing platform to sell trusted low-carbon and net-zero next gen natural gas to utilities, LNG export facilities, and other clean energy users. The delivery of next gen natural gas highlights the low-carbon benefits of Coterra’s production in northeast Pennsylvania and Williams’ gathering and transmission operations to provide low-emission gas products for Dominion Energy Virginia.
“Our partnership with Williams and Coterra is another important step in reducing emissions across the entire natural gas value chain,” Cedric Green, senior vice president of power generation for Dominion Energy Virginia, said. “Certified, low-emissions natural gas is a vital part of achieving our goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. We look forward to continuing this and other innovative partnerships to deliver affordable, reliable, and clean energy to the customers we serve.”
Over the one-year duration of the project, this pathway is estimated to avoid 120,000 metric tons of CO2e emissions compared to the national average methane emissions for the production, gathering, and transmission segments.
“Coterra is pleased to partner with Williams in deploying this exciting new technology which has the potential to change how we measure and report emissions data,” Blake Sirgo, senior vice president of operations for Coterra Energy, said. “We remain focused on being an environmental leader, and we are optimistic that this reference implementation will further aid Coterra in our ongoing efforts to reduce our emissions by developing, adopting, and implementing innovative technologies and practices.”
This is the first full value chain methane emissions certification program that will meet or exceed the Quantification, Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (QMRV) measurement standards prescribed by the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership.
