OGCI Sets Methane Leak Limit
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) has set itself the goal of cutting average methane intensity of its aggregated upstream gas and oil operations to below 0.25% by 2025, a reduction by one-fifth, it said September 24. It said it wants to achieve 0.20%, corresponding to a reduction by one-third.
The methane intensity refers to the methane that gets lost in the atmosphere when producing oil and gas, as a percentage of the gas sold. This effort represents a significant milestone in tackling a key issue in the fight against climate change and underlines OGCI’s stance in working together to support the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Hitting the 2025 target would reduce collective emissions by 350,000 metric tons/yr, compared with the baseline of 0.32% in 2017. OGCI will seek to go beyond this target, to achieve as much as one-third reduction in the same timeframe.
“Our aim is to work towards near zero methane emissions from the full gas value chain in support of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. We have worked to make our ambition concrete, actionable and measurable, helping to ensure that natural gas can realize its full potential in a low-emissions future,” the heads of the OGCI member companies said.
OGCI said its three new US members – ExxonMobil, Chevron and Occidental – supported the collective methane reduction target and shared OGCI’s focus on developing a collective roadmap on carbon capture, use and storage. In addition, each will commit $100mn to the OGCI Climate Investments fund.
In order to expand its global impact, OGCI Climate Investments today jointly announced with CNPC (the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation) that they are partnering to create OGCI Climate Investments China, an investment fund focused on China.
Speaking at Gastech September 17, Shell's integrated gas and new energies director Maarten Wetselaar said that reducing methane leakage was the biggest challenge for gas if it were to make the most of its environmental advantage over coal, and that the industry needed to measure its leakage better across the whole value chain.
Shell announced its own methane intensity target September 18, which went beyond OGCI's target: to below 0.2% by 2025.
The 13 members of OGCI (Graphic credit: BP)