by DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Fifty oil companies accounting for nearly half of global production have pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030 , said the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks on Saturday, which moved to environmental groups called “smokescreen.”
Methane emissions are a major contributor to global warming, so sharply reducing them could help slow temperature rise. If the companies make their promises, they could cut a tenth of a degree Celsius (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) from future warming, a leading climate scientist calculated and told The Associated Press. That is how much the Earth is currently warming every five years.
The announcement comes from Sultan al-Jaber, president of the climate summit known as COP28 and head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., as he and others argued that his background would allow him to bring oil companies to the negotiating table. Al-Jaber claimed the industry’s buy-in is critical to cutting the world’s greenhouse emissions by nearly half in seven years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times.
Major national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco, Brazil’s Petrobras and Angola’s Sonangol, and multinational companies such as Shell, TotalEnergies and BP signed the pledge.
“The world does not work without energy,” said al-Jaber, speaking in a session on the oil industry. “But the world will break down if we don’t fix the energy we use today, reduce their emissions on a gigaton scale, and if we don’t switch quickly to carbon alternatives.”
As if anticipating criticism, al-Jaber added: “Is it enough? Please listen to me. No, it’s not enough. I say with passion and absolute determination, I know that much more can be done.”
In the months leading up to COP28, there was speculation about action on methane. Methane leaks, as well as flaring, which burns excess methane, and venting of the gas, not only contribute to climate change, but these problems are largely solvable with current technologies and changes in operations. Indeed, oil and gas companies could have taken such steps years ago but mostly did not, instead focusing more on expanding production than on its byproduct.
In that way, the methane market represented a significant potential contribution to combating climate change, largely maintaining the status quo for the oil and gas industry. Many environmental groups were quick to criticize it.
The pledge is “a smokescreen to hide the reality that we need to phase out oil, gas and coal,” said a letter signed by more than 300 civil society groups.
Jean Su, director of energy justice at the Center for Biological Diversity, said “commitments to cut methane are significant, but they address the symptom, not the source.”
But Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said Saturday’s agreement could be “the most impactful day of announcements from any COP in my 30 years at the Environmental Defense Fund.”
Methane has caused about half of global warming since pre-industrial times, al-Jaber said, promoting such a significant deal. However, only about 23% of the world’s methane emissions are escaping from oil and gas drilling, with agriculture and waste being the bigger victims, said Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare , the climate scientist calculated the proposal that it would remove a tenth of a degree from. warming in the future.
“Hare made a significant contribution to ensuring that average temperatures do not rise by more than 1.5 degrees, but it would not be a fundamental contribution. % by 2030, he said.
Methane can be released at several points throughout an oil and gas company’s operation, from fracking to when natural gas is produced, transported or stored. Over a shorter period of time, it is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. However, methane only stays in the air for a few decades – as opposed to thousands of years for carbon dioxide – so reducing methane faster is “low-hanging fruit” because it is more easy and that future warming changes more, said al-Jaber.
Marcelo Mena, CEO of the Global Methane Hub, an alliance of philanthropies and organizations focused on reducing methane emissions, said near-zero methane emissions commitments should not be seen as a delay in phasing out of fossil fuels, as some environmental groups have claimed.
“We won’t let oil companies leak into the ocean until it’s phased out, so why let them leak methane to supercharge climate change?” said Mena, a former environment minister in Chile.
However, Mena said self-reporting did not go far enough to push oil and gas companies to make changes. Instead, he said that putting a price on pollution, or companies being shut out of markets that require high standards to leak, would force change.
Stricter regulations are coming into force. On Saturday, the US Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule aimed at reducing emissions of methane and other harmful air pollutants generated by the oil and gas industry. It focuses on emissions from existing oil and gas wells across the country. Previous EPA regulations focused only on new wells. It also controls smaller wells that will be needed to locate and plug methane leaks.
The United States will now have “the strongest methane regulations in the world,” White House climate adviser John Podesta told the AP.
Earlier this year, European Union negotiators reached an agreement to reduce methane emissions from the energy industry across the 27-member bloc. The agreement prohibits routine screening and flaring, and mandates strict reporting. By 2027, it will extend those norms to oil and gas exporters outside the bloc.
Saturday’s announcement did not address the oil and natural gas being burned by end users, known as Scope 3 emissions, which can be cars or plants powering cities. In his speech, al-Jaber said oil and gas companies need to do more to research solutions to Scope 3 emissions.
The United Arab Emirates and neighboring Saudi Arabia both support the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter, two OPEC heavyweights. Saudi Arabia’s vast oil resources, located close to the surface of its vast desert, make it one of the least expensive places in the world to produce crude oil. ADNOC Abu Dhabi and Aramco, the world’s third most valuable company, signed the pledge.
Separately, the organizers said that more than 100 countries have signed a commitment to triple the world’s installed renewable energy capacity by 2030, which the leaders of the so-called Group of 20 promised in September. Their countries emit 80% of all planet-warming gases. .
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