responsibly sourced gas

The global push to slash methane emissions from natural gas-related operations — from production wells to end-users — and certify gas as being “responsibly sourced” has been accelerating and broadening. It now seems possible that within the next two or three years the majority of gas produced in the U.S. will be certified as responsibly sourced gas, or RSG, and that large numbers of gas buyers — power generators, industrials, LNG exporters and local distribution companies (LDCs) among them — will be buying RSG, or at least moving toward doing so. Further, an RSG market is developing (a handful of trading platforms have already been launched), as are tracking systems to ensure that gas sold as RSG is fully accounted for and legit, with no double-counting or fuzziness. In today’s RBN blog, we begin an in-depth look at RSG and its emergence from a relative novelty to the cusp of wide acceptance.

Concerns about climate change have taken center stage in recent years, with the global economy under mounting pressure from governments, investors, and the wider public to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and transition to cleaner energy sources. With the understanding that a transition will take a long time and that the world will still need oil and gas in the interim, traditional energy companies are increasingly seeking ways to clean up their current operations as much as possible. That’s where responsibly sourced gas (RSG) comes into play — natural gas that is produced, gathered, processed, transported, and distributed in a way that meets the highest environmental standards and practices, resulting in reduced GHG emissions. In today’s RBN blog we’ll look at the emergence of RSG as an important opportunity for oil and gas companies looking to be responsible environmental stewards and how Project Canary’s certification standards measure their progress in achieving those goals.

In the past few months, there’s been a flurry of interest in certified responsibly sourced gas (RSG). RSG is natural gas — it still comes out of wells in the Marcellus, Haynesville, Permian, and other U.S. production areas. What distinguishes RSG is that its producers and pipeline companies have made efforts to significantly reduce the greenhouse gases — mostly methane — that are needlessly emitted along the value chain, and that an independent and respected outsider has certified the success of these efforts. RSG is still new to a lot of folks, including those in the natural gas business, so it’s reasonable to ask, who does the certifying, and what are the differences between them? In today’s RBN blog, we continue our series on RSG with a look at the different approaches taken by RSG certifiers: Project Canary and MiQ.

It seems that hardly a week goes by without another announcement on responsibly sourced natural gas (RSG). Either in response to rising interest among electricity generators, gas-distribution utilities, and gas-consuming industrials in procuring RSG or as proactive moves to boost their own ESG cred, a number of players in the gas sector — from producers to pipeline companies to LNG exporters — have been working to qualify their natural gas, their long-haul pipes, or their liquefaction plants for RSG status. A few producers have also been reaching deals to supply independently verified RSG to the market, with the expectation that at least a subset of gas/LNG buyers will be willing to pay the price premium involved. But all this is relatively new, and there’s still a lot that needs to be sorted out on the RSG front. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our series on RSG with a look at recent announcements and the associated challenges when selling RSG.

Given everything that’s happened lately on the ESG front — with a lot more expected — it’s safe to say that while hydrocarbons will continue to play an important role in the global economy for the foreseeable future, the companies that produce, transport and process crude oil, natural gas and NGLs will need to work much harder to minimize and mitigate their impact on the environment. Traditional energy companies have been scrambling to respond to the full-court press by investors, lenders and others to rein in and offset their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition to establishing goals for slashing their GHGs, and taking steps to tighten their upstream, midstream, and downstream operations, they’ve offered and delivered “carbon-neutral” shipments of LNG, oil and LPG to overseas buyers, using “nature-based” carbon credits to offset their life-cycle emissions. Now, as we discuss in today’s RBN blog, there’s a big push by U.S. gas distributors and other buyers to shift to gas that’s been produced, gathered, processed and transported as cleanly as humanly possible.