ABSTRACT

The energy industry has recently been putting considerable efforts into reducing methane emissions in oil & gas exploration and production. This is motivated not only by the cunent environmental focus on greenhouse gas emissions, but by profit motive as well - when gas prices are high, emissions represent significant lost profits. The EPA Gas STAR program seeks to encourage and reward voluntary initiatives by companies aimed at methane emission reductions. A joint partnership between LSU, COMM Engineering, and Devon Energy led to the development of an open source web application for tracking emission reduction projects which was donated to the EPA and made available to industry. This paper explores usability analysis and issues addressed during development of the web interfaces for the application.