Encino Environmental Services is proud to announce that our Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Joe Etheridge, was recognized as the 2025 Innovator of the Year by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) on October 9, 2025.
This award celebrates Joe’s leadership and groundbreaking work in developing the Enviromech™ Composite Thief Hatch a liquid storage tank solution that reduces flash loss and tackles emissions caused by corrosion by eliminating the interaction of dissimilar metals in a corrosive environment resulting in a long-lasting seal.
Joe’s innovation represents the core of what Encino stands for: service, safety, and innovation. As a mechanical engineer and lifelong problem-solver, Joe has spent more than two decades advancing technologies that help operators meet and exceed environmental compliance goals. His work continues to position Encino as a premiere innovator in the emissions testing and compliance industry.
Losses from oil and condensate storage tanks don’t always come from spills or leaks you can see. Often, the biggest contributor is venting – the controlled but costly release of vapors through a tank’s thief hatch. These vapors carry product with them, leading to measurable inventory shrinkage and increased emissions.
Flash loss occurs when high-pressure liquid enters the storage tank and rapidly releases dissolved gases. While flash loss is part of normal operations, the amount of product lost can vary dramatically based on equipment performance and is an often-overlooked drain on profitability and compliance. By understanding how it occurs, operators can make informed decisions to reduce venting loss and keep more product in the tank. One of the simplest and most cost-effective improvements is upgrading to a hatch engineered specifically to minimize venting.
The Enviromech Composite Thief Hatch solves this with a composite seal system that maintains a consistently tight seal under fluctuating pressures and temperatures – helping retain more product, lower VOC emissions, reduce costs, and minimize risk.
Encino is honored to be a member of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association and a proud supporter of Colorado’s energy industry. Joe’s recognition underscores our ongoing commitment to developing technologies that make emissions management more efficient, sustainable, and precise.
Enviromech™ Composite Thief Hatch for Liquid Storage Tanks
Standard thief hatch integrity degrades over time and with exposure to the corrosive environments of liquids storage tanks (hydrocarbons and produced water) and seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation. As a result, legacy thief hatches have been recognized as one of the most significant sources of fugitive emissions of methane and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC).
The patented Enviromech™ composite thief hatch significantly reduces this key source of liquid storage tank emissions. Enviromech composite thief hatches for liquid storage tanks are engineered with aerospace-grade tolerances and constructed from a durable composite glass-reinforced polyetherimide material, providing corrosion resistance and long-term mechanical integrity performance. These hatches offer a significant improvement in environmental performance and safety over existing technologies.
READ MORE: Enviromech™ Composite Thief Hatch
