Oil, gas firms fail to set strict targets to stop methane leaking: Report

Baku, Nov 14 : As the UN climate conference (COP29) is underway in Baku in Azerbaijan, oil and gas companies are exacerbating the climate crisis by failing to set strict targets to stop methane leaking into the atmosphere, while overall action to cut emissions globally remains weak at best and sometimes non-existent, a report from the financial think tank Carbon Tracker said on Thursday.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and while most large producers have announced plans to cut emissions from their operated upstream assets to “near zero” by 2030, the report reveals none have set targets that cover all methane emissions related to their business activities.

‘Absolute Impact 2024’ assesses and ranks pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions made by 30 of the largest oil and gas producers.

It reveals that the industry’s commitment to reducing emissions has stalled for the second year running and also warns that companies’ strategies for meeting their emissions targets are of “questionable credibility”.

It finds that no company is aligned with the Paris goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

European companies Eni, TotalEnergies, Repsol and bp rank highest, pledging absolute reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the production and use of their products by 2030.

However, most companies’ targets cover emissions from their operations only, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and state-owned national oil companies such as Pemex, Petrobras and Saudi Aramco.

Olivia Bisel, lead author and Associate Analyst, Oil and Gas, said: “Oil and gas companies are paying lip service to climate action while emissions from their products are fuelling increasingly severe storms, droughts, floods and heatwaves around the world. Greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly to avert even more devastating impacts and so it is essential that companies incorporate within their targets the huge volume of emissions that result from the use of the products they sell.”

Richard Collett-White, co-author and an analyst, Oil and Gas, said: “Oil and gas producers are not setting targets to cut methane emissions from all their activities, despite this being one of the most feasible and high-impact climate solutions available. They also continue to rely on doubtful estimates rather than measure emissions directly, and their targets should be viewed with scepticism until they do so.”

The report is designed to help investors, banks, regulators and policy makers navigate the complexity of companies’ different climate targets by assessing them against key criteria.

This year Carbon Tracker has added a new criterion focussing on methane and it has also added five wholly state-owned national oil companies to its analysis.

Reducing methane emissions is one of the fastest and most achievable ways of slowing global warming.

Methane has 82-87 times the warming potential of CO2 in the 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere and is responsible for about a third of the global warming to date. About a third of human-driven methane emissions come from fossil fuels.