Release Date
Today, we released a new edition of Directive 017: Measurement Requirements for Oil and Gas Operations and Directive 042: Measurement, Accounting, and Reporting Plan (MARP) Requirements for Thermal Bitumen Schemes.
The following is a summary of the updates to Directive 017:
- References to the Geothermal Resource Development Rules (GRDR), the Brine-hosted Mineral Resource Development Rules (BMR), and other appropriate references to geothermal and brine-hosted mineral resource development have been added.
- Requirements around single point measurement uncertainty and maximum uncertainty values have been combined or reordered for clarity (sections 1.7.1 and 1.7.2).
- The design and operation of each component of an entire oil or liquid meter system must be in accordance with the manufacturer’s recommendations or a recognized standard (section 2.6).
- Frequency of calculating and updating compressibility factors has been simplified, now pointing solely to the American Petroleum Institute (API) standards (section 4.3.2).
- “Continuous test” no longer needs to be physically tagged at the well but can instead be noted on the measurement schematic (sections 5.5.1 and 5.5.2).
- Testing frequency for new shallow gas wells in southeastern Alberta after the first 12 months of production have been generalized to be at the discretion of the operator or at the direction of the AER, subject to acceptable ranges of proration factors, rather than at prescribed frequencies based on production rates (section 7.2.3).
- Instead of submitting annual measurement performance reports to the AER, reports must instead be produced and made available upon request (section 7.5).
- Changes to enable gas measurement on a pad rather than a well basis for SAGD projects once the steam chambers associated with those wells have coalesced into a single subsurface drainage area (section 12.3.3).
- References to Directive 046: Production Audit Handbook have been removed as it has been rescinded.
- Updated the definition of fugitive emissions.
Directive 042 was updated to add requirements previously located in Directive 017 and added details on timing and how to submit new and updated MARPs.
The revised editions of Directive 017 and Directive 042 are available on our website. If you have any questions, contact our Customer Contact Centre by phone at 1-855-297-8311 or by email at inquiries@aer.ca.
