Mitsui E&P Australia harness ‘single source of truth’ for emissions and discharges reporting

Mitsui E&P Australia (MEPAU) is a Western Australian-based energy provider that is committed to providing a reliable, affordable and sustainable supply of energy. To achieve this, MEPAU is actively pursuing low carbon energy and carbon abatement opportunities to assist with energy transition.

Founded in 2004 as an Australian subsidiary of Mitsui & Co. Ltd, MEPAU has several assets in Western Australia’s Perth Basin, Exmouth Sub-Basin and Browse Basins, as well as the Otway and Gippsland Basins in Victoria and the Bowen Basin in Queensland.

MEPAU’s Waitsia Gas Project commenced operations in 2016 in the Perth Basin and is considered one of the largest onshore gas fields in Australia, with two gas-producing facilities in the Mid West region of Western Australia.

To aid with their company reporting and regulatory commitments, the MEPAU team sought an environmental data management solution to help them collate and review their monitoring data and emissions and discharges.

MEPAU Principal Environmental Advisor Lara Centa led the implementation of EnviroSys, acQuire’s environmental data management solution, across all MEPAU business assets, improving their ability to monitor their environmental impact.

Extensive data, sites and reporting obligations

MEPAU captures extensive environmental data to meet state and federal reporting requirements for Regulatory approvals, National Pollution Inventory (NPI) and National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Schemes.

These requirements involve the capture and frequent reporting of MEPAU’s monitoring, emissions and discharge data across various environmental parameters, including groundwater quality, water usage, soil quality and contamination, fuel usage, waste data, clearing activities, as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and any discharges to the environment, whether downhole or to evaporation ponds, for all MEPAU-operated assets.

Unifying data in a single source of truth

MEPAU commenced implementation of EnviroSys in early 2023, enabling the team to capture emissions and discharges made by MEPAU, as well as collate all monitoring data into a reliable single source of truth.

The solution implementation took a two-phased approach: phase one was collecting and importing two decades worth of historical data, implementing base monitoring programs, setting up scheduling routines and automating data loads from the laboratory. Phase two ensured that MEPAU’s emissions and discharge data were collated from the past five years and captured in EnviroSys using the Emissions functional extension.

MEPAU has three sites that are in a care and maintenance/ decommissioning phase, as well as two operating sites so an array of different environmental aspects needed to be captured. EnviroSys as a solution made collating, verifying and reporting on this data simpler; MEPAU could manage its sample data automatically, load data from the laboratory, and capture and convert our emissions data into tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Understanding compliance commitments with ease

For the MEPAU team, EnviroSys provides visibility over what commitments they have coming up, and the frequency.

MEPAU is committed to its social licence to operate, so it’s important it can clearly track what environmental data is needed to be captured and by when. As a company, it is critical that MEPAU understands what its commitments are so that it can remain compliant. EnviroSys makes it easy for MEPAU to review whether the data collected is complete and auditable.

Robust emissions tracking

Another critical component for an environmental data management solution was having the ability to track emissions totals with ease.

MEPAU opted for the Emissions functional extension available within EnviroSys, to give them the ability to capture and manage their emissions. The extension helps the team convert source data such as fuel usage, production volumes and emissions, using the appropriate factors and conversions, and output this into carbon dioxide and energy contributions on a site-by-site basis.

Now, with their emissions and discharge data across all facilities for the past five years, and new emissions data all managed in EnviroSys, the MEPAU team can keep appraised of emission levels throughout the year and make confident decisions about how they manage these emissions moving forward.

Want to find out how EnviroSys can help your business?

Regardless of the scale of your organisation, monitoring the environment can be a multi-disciplinary venture. If you’d like to learn more about how EnviroSys can help your business manage its environmental data, and answer the question, “am I compliant right now?”, get in touch with acQuire.