CCAC Oil & Gas Methane Partnership Companies release first annual public reports on mitigation progress

London, 18 October 2016: The Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) released its first annual report at this year’s Oil and Money conference, one of the largest annual gatherings of global oil and gas executives. The report includes summary reports covering the first full year of activities of its six original partner companies.

The reports show that participating companies are changing how they manage and report on their methane emissions. While companies focused on conducting emissions surveys of participating operations during the first year of the Partnership, some also began implementing identified opportunities, collectively reporting about 14,000 tonnes of methane reductions in 2015. This is equivalent to about 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) using a 20-year Global Warming Potential factor, or the same as removing 74,000 passenger cars from the roads for a year.

Eldar Saetre, CEO of Statoil, announced the release of the reports during his keynote address at the conference, which is taking place in London on 18-19 October. The OGMP partner companies are BP, Eni, Pemex, PTT, Repsol, Southwestern Energy, Statoil and Total. Together they produce about 10% of global natural gas.

Mr Saetre commented that addressing methane emissions “is one of the most effective short-term climate measures available, and key to ensuring that gas is seen as a credible part of the low-carbon future. The Oil and Gas Methane Partnership is an opportunity for Statoil to demonstrate our commitment to this important work.”

The Oil and Gas Methane Partnership Is a tri-sector initiative comprised of business, government and civil society.  In addition to the participating companies, its steering group includes the Environmental Defense Fund, the governments of Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the United Nations Environmental Programme, which serves as its secretariat.

The Partnership was launched in September 2014 in response to increasing stakeholder attention to methane emissions in the oil and gas sector. Methane is at least 84 times more potent as a climate forcer than CO₂ over a 20-year time horizon, and the oil and gas industry is considered one of the largest manmade sources of methane emissions. The International Energy Agency has identified minimizing upstream oil and gas methane emissions as one of the most important greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities available in the energy sector.

According to Jonathan Pershing, Special Envoy for Climate Change at the U.S. State Department, “Natural gas can help the world transition to a low-carbon economy, but the climate benefits of natural gas can only be realized if we actively address methane leaks throughout the value chain. The CCAC’s Oil and Gas Methane Partnership allows industry an important opportunity to show leadership in maximizing the climate benefits of natural gas by minimizing methane emissions.”

“Reducing oil and gas methane emissions is an essential, low-cost strategy for slowing the accelerated pace of today’s warming,” according to Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s a major opportunity for climate progress that cannot be missed. This report by the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership is an important step to understand the scope of these companies’ methane emissions. Continued progress by these companies and others to measure, report and substantially reduce their emissions is critical for the industry to show it will be part of the solution to minimizing greenhouse emissions.”

The CCAC Oil & Gas Methane Partnership provides companies with a credible mechanism to systematically address their methane emissions and demonstrate this systematic approach to stakeholders. A company joining the Partnership voluntarily commits itself to the following in its participating operations:

• Survey for nine “core” sources of methane emissions;
• Evaluate tested, cost-effective technology options to address unmitigated sources; and
• Report progress on asset surveys, mitigation project evaluations and emission reductions achieved in a transparent manner.

There is no minimum share of operations required for participation in the Partnership, and companies increase this share at their own pace. Since companies report yearly on the share of their assets participating, however, they have an incentive to increase the share at a reasonable pace until all upstream operations are covered. The emphasis is on companies learning by doing and continuously improving their operations over time.

Many of the practices recommended by the partnership are highly cost-effective and can lead to additional benefits such as increased product recoverability, leading in turn to increased gas sales volumes and safety.

Further details of the CCAC Oil & Gas Methane Partnership may be found here.

CONTACT:
Tiy Chung, CCAC Communications Officer: Tiy.Chung [at] unep.org, +33 6 26 71 79 81