The oil and gas industry is being pushed by regulators, third parties and investors to better identify and mitigate its methane emissions, especially the few “super-emitter” sites that make outsize contributions to overall emissions. But while operators are ramping up capital spending on new technology, one thing has become clear: There is no silver bullet when it comes to reducing emissions, and each option includes one or more drawbacks, including source attribution, costs, quantification, and detection limits. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll break down the advantages and disadvantages of the different measurement technologies.
Posts from Erin Tullos
Friday, 3/10/2023
Oil and gas companies across the value chain are facing new pressures to manage and reduce methane emissions. Their ability to access premium markets and buyers, appeal to investors and avoid costly fees depends on developing a credible plan to measure and reduce methane emissions. At the very least, the industry’s regulatory outlook, its non-governmental quasi-oversight and its access to capital are changing in ways that make understanding sometimes inconsistent emissions data vitally important. In today’s RBN blog, we explore the recent changes and the mounting external pressures around methane emissions.
Thursday, 2/23/2023
Over the past five years, the North American oil and gas industry has undertaken a major strategic shift, embracing the global push to decarbonize by, among other things, emphasizing the greener emissions profile of natural gas vs. coal and taking aggressive steps to reduce the volumes of methane, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted during the production, processing and transportation of just about every kind of hydrocarbon. It’s a real challenge, though. Operators face a seemingly endless and overwhelming set of choices about how best to approach emissions reductions, which technologies to use, which programs to join, and how to interpret new emissions-measurement data, to name a few. In today’s RBN blog, we begin a look at how operators can achieve key environmental goals while protecting — even improving — their bottom line and meeting a host of important goals, from reducing the cost of capital and managing investor pressure to improving realized prices and market access.
