Environmental hazard: The ‘Gateway to Hell’ crater in Turkmenistan. The site is essentially a roaring methane leak and has been burning for more than four decades. — AFP
Paris: Sitting in his cramped office in Paris, Manfredi Caltagirone admits that one of the world’s highest-profile efforts to cut methane emissions so far isn’t stopping the gas from escaping and warming the atmosphere.
Caltagirone heads the International Methane Emissions Observatory, or Imeo, an informal police force that’s the tip of the spear in the global war against the potent greenhouse gas.
His team at the United Nations (UN) includes researchers who scour satellite data to identify and sound the alarm on methane plumes in an effort to help nearly 160 countries that are backing a pledge made almost three years ago to cut pollution 30% by 2030.
Since it launched a notification system in 2022, Imeo has told companies and governments about more than 1,100 giant methane clouds escaping from oil and gas facilities.
Yet the number of releases that it’s verified have been halted “can be counted on two hands, maybe one”, Caltagirone said. “Action taken in response to the notifications is lower than we were expecting.”
Tackling methane – and doing so quickly – has been declared a crucial priority by world leaders and fossil fuel executives, many of whom have signed on to an accelerating series of pledges since 2021 to shore up their green credentials.
New commitments have been among key outcomes from successive annual UN climate conferences, and major polluters insist they are making progress.
The 12 members of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which includes Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, Exxon Mobil Corp and China National Petroleum Corp, said they halved emissions of the gas since 2017.
Yet methane emissions from the fossil-fuel industry, including coal mining, remain close to a record level set in 2019 as supply continues to expand, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) data.
Concentrations of atmospheric methane, from human and natural sources, have surged faster than any period on record.
“There’s a huge disagreement between what companies say they’re emitting and what the scientific field thinks that they’re emitting,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist who has tracked the rise in methane.
“We’re not seeing real action on a scale or at a pace that’s making a difference.”
Because methane traps much more heat than carbon dioxide in the short term, cutting emissions, especially from fossil-fuel systems, is widely seen as one of the fastest and most achievable ways to slow global warming.
Money is also pouring into technologies that can curb methane from trickier sources such as cows and landfills.
Methane will again be a focus when more than 190 countries gather in Baku for COP29 talks later this month.
Azerbaijan, this year’s host, is a major exporter of gas and a serial emitter. This year, it signed on to the flagship Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions and will put forward a new international commitment to reduce methane from organic waste.
The COP29 presidency will also convene a summit with the United States and China on methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases.
Still, taming methane pollution will take years, even if the recent flurry of pacts and agreements are successful. So far, at least, there’s little to show for those highly publicised efforts.
The ability to pinpoint the source of emissions from the sky was supposed to be a breakthrough in combating methane.
John Kerry, the former US climate envoy, cast it as a shift in the balance of power between activists and companies at last year’s COP28 conference in Dubai.
“You can run but you can’t hide,” Kerry warned methane polluters. “We have to be prepared to name and shame.” Bloomberg Philanthropies has provided funding to help slash methane emissions from fossil fuels, which has included a project with Imeo and other partners.
The entity is the philanthropic organisation of Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg News.
Today, data from Imeo is pouring in. Since last year, the agency has informed the US Department of State of more than 160 large methane clouds at 117 different locations. US agencies have been “aggressively pursuing” the reports, the department said in a statement.
At least one of the notices led to the identification of a previously unknown leak, and some prompted companies to mitigate emissions, according to the statement.
Other examples in the United States and off the coast of Thailand help illustrate the difficulties being experienced in quickly addressing observed leaks.
In one Imeo notice, sent in July 2023, Caltagirone’s team said they had spotted a cloud of gas spewing from a site known as Dominator Compressor Station in an oil-rich region of southern New Mexico, where a collection of half a dozen gigantic engines push gas from nearby wells into a pipeline.
Imeo found that it was releasing methane at a rate that would have the same short-term planet-warming power as the tailpipes of 28,000 idling cars.
Imeo’s note was forwarded to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by the US State Department, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information request.
The documents show Imeo requested authorities to follow up with operators, but don’t indicate what, if anything, the EPA did in response.
In subsequent months, more clouds were observed on 10 further occasions. The EPA didn’t comment on the Dominator releases.
The New Mexico Oil Conservation Division, which regulates methane emissions in the state, said it wasn’t aware of the releases until contacted by Bloomberg Green this April.
An investigation has since been concluded without faulting Energy Transfer LP, the company that operates the compressor station.
All of the releases were due to repairs and maintenance and were “within our permitted allowable emissions,” Energy Transfer said in a statement.
In a separate case, Imeo began issuing warnings from last November about an offshore gas platform in the Gulf of Thailand that’s been intermittently releasing methane for more than a decade.
The facility is run by units of Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Pcl, which are both among more than 140 companies that are members of the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0, an Imeo initiative aimed at improving the reporting and mitigation of releases.
Scientists at Imeo, part of the UN Environment Programme, continued to observe methane from the site between July and early September and issued more warnings.
Carigali-PTTEPI Operating Company Sdn Bhd, which operates the site for the partners, has conducted a “comprehensive internal assessment, including drone surveys of our flare system,” in response, it said in a statement.
The company said it had found no methane leaks at the site’s central processing platform, and that “facilities remain safe for operations and the surrounding areas”.
Curbing methane with the urgency required remains challenging, though slow progress toward global targets mirrors the experience of efforts to decarbonise many other segments of the global economy.
Everyone from Texas oil barons to Iranian leaders have to be persuaded to give up decades-old habits like venting and flaring excess gas.
Polluters also need to invest in better equipment and implement procedures that eliminate intentional releases and minimise accidental ones.
Delivering capacity globally to “receive, remedy, and respond to detected emissions events will require significant improvements to technical capacity and strengthening of emissions reduction mandates”,”the State Department said. — Bloomberg
