The Petroleum Technology Alliance of Canada (PTAC) (which administers projects for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP)), has specifically identified “potential sources of air emissions from flowback operations, the effectiveness of current regulatory requirements, and potential methods to control adverse emissions” as important “public policy issues”, which include key “knowledge gaps” on whether fracturing fluid additives are causing an “adverse effect to the public or environment”. PTAC further identifies “ultrafine particulate matter” as a “priority substance” for which “quantification … at Upstream Oil and Gas Facilities is required”. Preliminary research by members of the network team has demonstrated the potential for entrained flowback fluids to fundamentally alter the structure of emitted particulate in addition to significantly affecting species emission rates.
More generally, optical and morphological properties of particulate emitted by flares are critical global concerns, where BC is now understood to be the second most important climate forcing agent in the atmosphere, and flare generated BC is implicated as both an significant global emission and the single most important source of BC deposition in the arctic.
