Oil and Gas Methane Partnership releases 2nd Annual Report

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Oil & Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) released its second set of annual reports detailing the mitigation status of partner companies’ participating operations.

Josu Jon Imaz, CEO of the Spanish oil and gas company, Repsol, announced the publication at the Autumn meeting of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative in London today. 

“Gas can have an important role to play in the transition to a lower-carbon energy future”, said Mr. Imaz. “In order for it to do this, however, it is important to address methane emissions – and important to demonstrate to stakeholders how we are doing this.”

The purpose of the OGMP is to help oil and gas companies better understand where methane emissions can occur, as well as cost-effective ways of addressing them. It provides a protocol by which companies systematically survey their participating operations for nine “core” sources of emissions, and report annually on what they find. Its series of technical guidance documents recommend best-practice mitigation options.

The annual reports cover the previous calendar year. Accomplishments noted for 2016 include the following:

• Two new companies (Shell and Engie E&P) joined as new Partners, bringing the number of Partner companies to ten and the share of global oil and gas production covered by OGMP companies to approximately 12.5 percent;
• Two new companies submitted annual reports for the first time (BP and Engie E&P);
• The nine publicly-available technical documents for quantifying and mitigating methane emissions underwent public review with input from governments, civil society and industry;
• Companies have now surveyed over 50 participating operations in nine countries. Surveys concentrated on production facilities but also included midstream gathering and boosting operations, gas processing plants and LNG export facilities;
• Companies increased the mitigation status of core sources in their operations and reported emissions reductions of 8,689 million tonnes of methane.

So far, 10 oil and gas companies have joined the OGMP: BP, Engie E&P, Eni, Pemex, PTT, Repsol, Shell, Southwestern, Statoil, and Total. The initiative’s Steering Group includes representatives from the governments of the Netherlands, Norway, UK and US, as well as from the Environmental Defense Fund and the United Nations Environment Programme, which also serves as the secretariat. 

The OGMP was launched at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in September 2014 to address what the International Energy (IEA) has identified as one of the most important greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities available in the energy sector. The oil and gas sector is widely considered to be one of the largest man-made sources of methane emissions. The IEA recently estimated that methane emissions from the oil and gas sector were 76 million tonnes in 2015, but that 40-50% of this could be avoided at no net cost to companies, in large part because the saved gas could be sold. The OGMP makes companies aware of the most cost-effective mitigation opportunities.

A company joining the OGMP 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 annually in a transparent manner on progress in conducting asset surveys, mitigation project evaluations and the emission reductions achieved.

There is no minimum number or share of operations required for participation in the OGMP, and companies increase this share at their own pace. Since companies report yearly on the share of their assets participating, however, there is an incentive to increase this at a reasonable pace until all upstream operations are covered. Southwestern and Statoil currently include the largest share (more than 80 percent) of their operated upstream assets within the OGMP. The emphasis is on learning by doing and continuously improving operations over time.

The 2017 and 2016 reports may be found here

Further information on the CCAC Oil & Gas Methane Partnership may be found on the CCAC website here