The oil and gas industry is touting voluntary efforts of companies to cut emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon, as it tries to make the case against regulations.
The American Petroleum Institute is releasing its second progress report Wednesday on a voluntary program it started with 26 oil and gas companies in 2017 called the Environmental Partnership, which it created to limit leaks of methane and reduce emissions of related pollutants called volatile organic compounds.
The report showed how the partnership, which has grown to 83 members, including 36 of the largest 40 oil and gas producers, has implemented a methane leak detection and repair program. Not all companies participating in the partnership are API members.
Participating companies conducted more than 184,000 leak surveys in 2019 across more than 87,000 production sites, reporting a “leak occurrence rate” of 0.08%, or less than 1 leak in 1,000 components. The leak rate is lower than the 0.16% the partnership reported the year before.
“The Environmental Partnership has always aimed to be a continuing improvement body,” said Vanessa Ryan, manager of the carbon reduction team at Chevron and chairwoman of the Environmental Partnership. “These are things companies can justify and continue to do in times like this when the industry is struggling.”
Ryan said companies have not eased their efforts during the pandemic, despite mounting financial struggles among producers who shut down wells due to low oil prices.
“We are not seeing any type of stoppage or reduced commitment to reduce emissions,” Ryan told the Washington Examiner in an interview.
Critics say API’s voluntary program is insufficient and intended to distract from the oil lobbying group’s opposition to direct federal regulation of methane.
API’s release of the Environmental Partnership report comes weeks before the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finalize a rule that would eliminate the direct federal regulation of methane emissions from oil and gas operations.
The move has divided the oil and gas industry, with some major companies warning the Trump administration that limiting federal oversight over methane leaks damages the industry’s attempt to sell gas as a “fuel of the future” rather than one that is phased out over coming decades as part of aggressive climate change regulations.
“For as long as API continues to actively seek destruction of the methane regulatory framework for the oil and gas sector, their voluntary efforts to address methane emissions aren’t going to be taken seriously at all,” said Ben Ratner, a senior director at the Environmental Defense Fund who studies methane.
Ratner’s group collaborates with oil and gas companies to invest in technological research to better detect methane leaks, which are invisible to the naked eye.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is more potent than carbon dioxide, although its emissions don’t last as long in the atmosphere.
API argues the oil and gas industry is self-motivated to limit methane emissions because leaks remove product that can be sold for profit.
But the Environmental Partnership does not set an overarching emission reduction goal for participating companies that are combating methane leaks, and the report did not measure the amount of emissions cuts that have occurred as a result of the program.
However, the partnership is based on actions to find and fix methane leaks outlined by the EPA that have the potential to reduce methane emissions 60%.
Ryan noted the initiative is expanding starting this year to include midstream companies that transport oil and gas, along with producers.
She highlighted a workshop the partnership hosted in March in Midland, Texas, to discuss how companies can reduce flaring of methane, or deliberately burning unwanted gas as a byproduct to oil. The partnership is continuing during the pandemic to host phone calls and webinars to share best practices for methane mitigation.
“We have seen record levels of engagement,” Ryan said.
Chevron is among the top performers when it comes to containing methane emissions from its operations in the Permian Basin, the United States’s largest oil and gas producing region straddling West Texas and New Mexico.
But a study this year by researchers at Harvard University and the Environmental Defense Fund, published in the journal Science Advances, found methane was being released in the Permian Basin at twice the rate as previously estimated.
The study, based on satellite data, showed Permian producers are leaking methane at a rate equal to 3.7% of their gas production.
Ratner of the Environmental Defense Fund said API’s focus on publishing a “leak occurrence rate,” or the frequency with which leaks occur, is misleading compared to the study of the Permian, which focused on the quantity of methane leaked.
“A small number of very large methane emissions events is a huge part of the overall problem, so just because a company reports a low methane emission frequency does not mean actual levels of methane emissions are low,” Ratner said.
Matthew Todd, director of the Environmental Partnership, defended the group’s approach by arguing that changing the reporting method could discourage the participation of smaller companies that don’t have expertise in limiting methane leaks but benefit from the information sharing in the program.
“The reporting coming into this program is showing that it’s working,” Todd said. “The program has been designed to evolve, and it’s already evolving.”
