Changes to Directive 060 

• Effective January 1, 2023 various regulations have come into effect for methane emissions under AER’s Directive 060
• OVG:
  • Overall Vent Gas Limit (OVG) is a limit for the overall vent gas allowable at a site. The duty holder must limit vented emissions to 15 e3m3 of vent gas per month or 9,000 e3 kg of methane per month
  • The change that has come into effect Jan.1, 2023 related to the OVG limit is now vent gas from pneumatic devices, compressor seals, and glycol dehydrators are included in the OVG as they were excluded previously
• Equipment-Specific Vent Gas Limits
  • Level controllers in-place before Jan.1, 2022 the duty holder must:
    • prevent or control vent gas or 
    • ensure any level controllers that actuate once or more in 15 minutes use a low bleed relay or adjust the process to ensure the time between actuations is > than 15 minutes.
  • All other controllers (Other than level controllers) that vent natural gas and were in-place before Jan.1, 2022 the duty holder must:
    • prevent or control vent gas or 
    • Retrofit the controllers to ensure they have a manufacturer-specified steady-state vent gas rate of
      less than 0.17 m3 (Low Bleed)
• Exemption:
  • If the duty holder can demonstrate that a pneumatic instruments that vents natural gas is required to maintain safe operating conditions or to achieve a required response time and there is no other way to accomplish this while still meeting venting requirement 1, 3, or 4 under section 8.6.1, then that instrument is exempted from the applicable requirement.
  • Note: The duty holder must hang a weatherproof visible tag on the instrument that indicates this exemption

Stay tuned for our future Methane Monday’s for information on how to manage these instruments going forward and mitigation solutions. In the meantime feel free to check out our services relating to emissions here: