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Last December, representatives from major oil and gas companies around the world committed to action that will cut methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030. The Global Methane Pledge (GMP), made at the COP28 summit in Dubai, promises a huge leap forward in the fight against climate change. Partners of this agreement have announced that more than $1 billion of new grant funding will be allocated to support action against methane – more than three times the pre-existing funding levels – and individual action is ongoing to further reduce the impact of these harmful emissions.

More than 150 countries have signed the GMP, committing them to cutting methane emissions from human-caused sources by 30% by the end of the decade. Alongside other newly-announced measures, as part of the pledge certain businesses could face financial penalties for failing to act. The US, for example, plans to introduce a fine of $900 per tonne of methane emitted this year, which will rise by 67% to $1,500 per tonne in 2026.

Perhaps the most exciting commitment made at COP28 is the launch of the Data for Methane Action campaign. The Global Methane Hub plans to increase the funding available to governments to take advantage of previously unleveraged data. Alongside the full launch of a new Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), energy suppliers could soon have access to a suite of tools and funding to reduce gaps in their understanding of where emissions are occurring, enabling them to act as never before against this invisible threat.

The picture is clear: after decades of limited action, the oil and gas sector is moving in the right direction on methane. But whether these pledges will be met remains to be seen. While the world awaits the new measures to be fully implemented, there is much that the industry can do to show its commitment to reducing methane emissions and firmly positioning itself in the fight against climate change.

An invisible threat

The promises made at COP28 were desperately needed. Methane emissions represent one of the largest threats facing humankind today. Since the Industrial Revolution, this invisible gas has been responsible for approximately a third of the recorded rise in global temperatures.[1] Without immediate action, emissions from human sources are projected to increase by up to 13% in the next six years, causing significant and irreparable harm to the planet.

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The graphs show globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance determined from marine surface sites. The first graph shows monthly means for the last four years plus the current year, and the second graph shows the full NOAA time-series starting in 1983. Values for the last year are preliminary, pending recalibrations of standard gases and other quality control steps. Other impacts on the latest few months of data are described below. The Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory has measured methane since 1983 at a globally distributed network of air sampling sites (Dlugokencky et al., 1994). Source: Lan, X., K.W. Thoning, and E.J. Dlugokencky: Trends in globally-averaged CH4, N2O, and SF6 determined from NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory measurements. Version 2024-02, doi.org/10.15138/P8XG-AA10

In terms of trapping heat, methane is around 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and persists for a much shorter time in the atmosphere. This means that reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective available strategies for making a difference to the environment.

Approximately 60% of all methane emissions are caused by human activity, and a third of this is produced by the energy sector through flaring, venting, and leaking infrastructure.[2] Estimates suggest that halving these emissions over the next 30 years will be instrumental in meeting the critical goal of reaching global net zero emissions by 2050. Achieving this target is essential for limiting global warming to just 1.5°C; the threshold agreed by scientists, beyond which the environment would suffer irreparable damage.

The GMP saw several new signatories at COP28, including Kenya, Angola, and Turkmenistan, the latter of which in particular has been highlighted as a methane 'super-emitter'. More than 5,600 super-emitter events have been recorded by UN research since 2019, with little overall reduction observed among many GMP signatories. In certain countries, emissions have even increased.[3] In 2022, two oil and gas fields alone in Turkmenistan were responsible for more global warming than all carbon emissions released by the UK that year.[4]

Of the new regulations, the measures being introduced by the US Environmental Protection Agency look particularly promising. These laws have the potential to prevent 58 million tons of methane pollution over the next 14 years, by mandating thorough pollution control system inspections alongside equipment upgrades. This represents a reduction against current levels of 80% or taking the equivalent of 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

The pledge to ending flaring activity by 2050 made by 50 companies will also make a significant difference. Aided by a new $250 million trust fund, this pledge would effectively end the 140 billion cubic metres of methane and other greenhouse gases released by this practice every year. As every tonne of gas flared results in two to three tonnes of CO2 being released, achieving this target will be instrumental to limiting global warming.

A clearer picture

The commitments outlined so far mark encouraging progress in the fight against climate change, but in isolation, will not overcome the main problem facing oil and gas suppliers. Limitations in the data on methane emissions have effectively hidden the scale of the problem, preventing optimised action from being taken.

Improving the accuracy of methane emissions data is widely recognised as the best solution to reducing the amount of pollution emitted. Of course, this action is easier said than done. Most oil and gas operators oversee many thousands of miles of pipelines, rendering manual checks impractical at best and expensive, ineffectual time sinks at worst. As a result, leaking pipelines have been widely accepted as a regrettable cost of doing business for decades.

This is why the announcement of the MARS at COP28 is so promising for the industry. Recent years have seen rapid progress in satellite tracking and other modelling techniques that have significantly enhanced the capacity of oil and gas producers to collect data on their emissions. The MARS is one such system. In collaboration with the Copernicus space programme, it represents the first global system that connects satellite-detected methane emissions with trackable notifications.

In a pilot phase that ran throughout 2023, the MARS identified more than 1,000 methane plumes from energy production and linked 400 of these to specific facilities. Tools such as this are changing the picture of emissions and expanding the available approaches to ensure compliance with global commitments on methane.
This new tool is being supported by a worldwide campaign to encourage more comprehensive data collection. The Data to

Methane Action campaign aims to improve the funding available to governments and businesses to enable radical reductions in methane emissions by targeting leaks and policy change. The campaign encourages improvements in data collection, supported by satellite monitoring systems and scientific monitoring campaigns, providing transformational tools to help the energy sector scale up its efforts.

Action on the ground

While oil and gas businesses wait to benefit from the monitoring systems announced at COP28, they can pre-emptively improve their emissions profiles by taking action on the ground. Thanks to technological advances, businesses today have access to a suite of monitoring solutions for identifying where leaks are occurring, chief among which are high-performance infrared (IR) sensors. These small devices generate beams of IR light that pass through a filter inside a sampling chamber that blocks certain wavelengths.

This means that only the desired wavelengths make it through the filter to a detector, which measures the attenuation of the light it receives to determine the precise concentrations of gases that may be present. Changing filters enables different wavelengths of light to reach the detector, which can, in turn, be used to check for different kinds of gases.

Technologies such as this, combined with the growing international awareness around methane, have the potential to make a real difference to international action against climate change. As other sectors such as agriculture, start to act on the problem, the oil and gas industry has the potential to position itself as a leader in methane reduction strategies.

Advanced emission tracking devices mean leak prevention is no longer a hypothetical concept. Supported by the growing groundswell of funding to improve monitoring solutions, today's energy suppliers have a wealth of options available to track harmful leaks and start to address them. Improving the total picture of methane emissions through more accurate information must be the New Year's Resolution for oil and gas businesses – only then can they claim to be truly awake to the problem posed by methane.

Text: MARK NAPLES, Umicore Coatings Services   Images:  SUHTTERSTOCK, FREEPIK