Environmental
Natural gas and oil are abundant, reliable, and affordable energy sources that lift communities out of poverty and power modern life. Parker also recognizes the impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on the quality of the natural environment and their contributions to climate change. We support ambitions to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and industry efforts to produce abundant energy while lowering GHG emissions. Parker is doing our part to mitigate our operational impacts by identifying cost-effective ways to be more environmentally responsible through our ESG journey. Simply put, we are committed to being environmentally responsible. Our approach is to align with our customers’ environmental priorities and ESG strategies while we continue to work toward developing our own environmental solutions.
As an industry leader, Parker is known for our numerous world records, including in extended-reach drilling, safety performance, and world-class standards for environmental protection.
Reducing Our Environmental Impact
We strive to reduce our environmental impact through our products and services and how we operate as a company. At a minimum, we implement business practices that minimize pollution and incorporate lifecycle thinking into our products’ design, manufacture, use, and end-of-life management, including minimizing waste.
Minimizing Our Ecological Footprint
Parker works in some of the world’s harshest, most remote, and most environmentally sensitive locations. We have 88 years of experience tailoring Parker services to meet unique customer specifications on challenging projects – whether arctic, desert, rainforest, mountains, or offshore – including:
- Camouflaging rigs and installing sound-dampening barriers in Africa to protect the environment,
- Designing and building heli-rigs to minimize the drilling footprint in a jungle,
- Providing mitigations like secondary and tertiary spill prevention and closed-loop systems to protect the Arctic tundra as we did on Sakhalin Island and continue to do in Alaska, and
- Developing a concept for a rig with a very small footprint that can be moved around its location in South America without touching surrounding trees.
GHG Emissions
Parker designs strategies to reduce GHGs in line with our industry’s emphasis on reducing its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions footprint and CO2 equivalents (other GHGs). We are focusing our efforts on exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions at Parker-owned rigs, starting with establishing a baseline to measure our emissions from Parker’s diesel engine fleet. Our technological advancements with Parker’s switchgear technology enable us to develop ESG strategies for our customers that result in a lower carbon footprint. Our Alaska rigs can run highline electrical power and diesel engines in parallel. Using clean highline electrical power greatly reduces the requirement on our diesel drilling engines. Our power generation innovation lowers energy consumption from our diesel engine population. We look forward to working with customers interested in pursuing switchgear technology and highline electrical power to limit the use of diesel.
Plug and Abandonment Services
Parker participates in the efficient abandonment of late-life wells to ensure that they present no risk of hydrocarbon leakage to the environment. Approximately 25% of wellbores exhibit sustained casing pressure, which implies they have a leak. Parker’s core expertise in wellbore construction positions us to safely and efficiently provide plug and abandonment (P&A) services that remove potential leakage into the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas that is 84 times more effective in absorbing heat than CO2, methane causes an intense impact on the climate. Through our P&A services, we help reduce the global inventory of leaking wellbores safely and permanently.
Geothermal
Geothermal energy, a subsurface resource, is becoming a major energy source for the world. Parker has all of the technologies, know-how, and experience for success in geothermal drilling. Parker has a proven track record with geothermal drilling operations and drilling geothermal wells in reservoirs. Since the 1970s Parker has been tapping geothermal wells. In Indonesia, for example, Parker has worked with our partner to drill over 100 geothermal wells in the last 20 years. Thus, at Parker, we are actively exploring ways to leverage our expertise to unlock value for customers and to use our specialized experience to support our customers in geothermal opportunities. We also have significant expertise in geothermal wellbore construction and associated services, a growing global market. In summary, we continually look for opportunities to bring scale in geothermal in key geographies to maximize our portfolio offering via new businesses ideas, partnerships, agreements, and new markets
Managing Air Emissions
Our company-wide Air Emissions Management Standard provides guidance on reducing emissions from combustion sources, equipment leaks, accidental releases, and particulate matter, and for effective preventive maintenance to help control fugitive emissions. Parker constantly seeks innovative solutions to reduce emissions.
Reduced Commuting, Reduced Pollution
The flexible work schedule at our corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas, allows our employees to reduce their commuting time and vehicle emissions. Houston employees can work remotely and use days in the office primarily for collaboration. With the option to work remotely, we limit smog from long commutes and reduce traffic and pollution from GHG emissions.
Proprietary Technology to Improve Resource Efficiency
We prioritize the development of technology conceived through our unique experience as drilling contractors and designed to help our customers achieve their environmental sustainability goals:
- Our innovative monitoring system – D3O – allows for real-time visibility of drilling conditions and efficiency through sensors in our rigs.
- Our rig assessment tool – RAPID – allows a rapid inspection of the condition of tools, equipment, and systems on a rig, including identifying required maintenance and repairs for every critical element.
There are positive ESG impacts of Parker’s ESG technology solutions. Our technology solutions enable Parker to deliver superior drilling performance, rig efficiency, tubular running performance, and data digitization to drive continual improvement, including demonstrable lifecycle value through competitively priced wellbore construction services. Greater efficiency goes hand-in-hand with reduced energy demand and waste.
Integrated Management System: The Cornerstone of Process Discipline
Parker’s Integrated Management System (IMS) establishes expectations and protocols that apply across all our operations to address environmental risks inherent to our business and prevent incidents. It is the cornerstone of our process discipline approach to achieving operational excellence for our customers. Parker employees comply with IMS resources and are guided by the environmental management standards in the IMS for air emissions, waste, water, hazardous materials, storage, spill prevention, and wildlife protection. The IMS framework also contains elements related to operations and maintenance, emergency response, incident investigation, and information and documentation, among others. In addition, our ISO 14001-compliant Environmental Management System (EMS) is an integral part of the IMS and guides the organization to set objectives and targets directly related to energy and environmental conservation.
Asset Integrity and Reliability to Manage Risk
Operating reliable, safe, well-maintained assets such as drilling rigs and rental tools and providing competent drilling-related services is imperative for Parker’s management of ESG risk. We design, build, operate, and maintain our equipment based on technical requirements and customer needs. To protect our assets and safeguard people and the environment, we provide monitoring systems, inspections, testing, certification, training, spill containment, and well control capabilities for process safety. Our proactive approach to asset integrity and reliability, combined with a strong management system, allows us to proactively manage process-related ESG risks at Parker.
