Oil and gas companies have a big problem: methane leaks. And BlackRock has just backed a company who is aiming to solve them.
What’s happening:
- Aerial methane detection company Kairos Aerospace has raised $52M USD in a Series D financing round
- The round was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock
How it works:
- Kairos uses sensor technology and data analytics to monitor oil and gas properties to rapidly determine where the largest methane leaks are coming from on oil and gas projects
- Kairos’s proprietary spectrometers are able to measure the absorption of of reflected sunlight by methane molecules in order to quickly determine if there is a leak and how large of a leak it is
- The sensor technology developed by Kairos is attached to planes which fly every day over oil and gas operations, collecting data and information about every region they survey
By the numbers:
- Kairos has surveyed over 430,000 wells and over 200,00 miles of pipeline infrastructure
- By detecting methane leaks early, Kairos has avoided the emissions of approximately 15,000 automobiles
- Under current regulations in the United States set by the Environmental Protection Agency, oil and gas operators are fined $900.00 per metric ton of methane they emit beyond the emission guidelines they are supposed to maintain at their operations
Going deeper:
- A Stanford University study previously validated Kairos’s airplane based hyperspectral imaging technology as a reliable method of determining methane leaks and being capable of providing important real time data for solving them
