KNOWLEDGE PARTNER
26
AUGUST 2019 oilandgasmiddleeast.com
THE
BIGGER
PICTURE
The International Energy Agency takes monitoring &
response to a larger view of the oil and gas industryT
he International Energy Agency
(IEA) has developed an online tool to
track oil and gas-related methane
emissions, covering eight industry
areas and seventy countries.
The tool provides the agency’s latest
estimates of methane emissions, and
sets out possible reductions using current
technologies. Its analysis found that global
methane emissions related to the oil and gas
industry could be halved at no net cost.
The concentration of methane in the
atmosphere is currently around two-and-
half times greater than pre-industrial levels
and increasing steadily, according to a press
statement from IEA. This rise has important
implications for climate change as methane
is a potent greenhouse gas. The energy sector
is one of the largest sources of methane
emissions originating from human activity.
IEA projections suggest that oil and, in
particular, natural gas will play important
roles in the energy system for years to come,
even under strong decarbonisation scenarios
aligned with international climate goals.
Reinforcing eff orts to minimise methane
emissions along their supply chains is an
essential complement to the reductions in
CO2 that are led by increased effi ciency and
deployment of clean energy technologies.
“The oil and gas sectors have an open
goal in front of them. They can avoid close
to 50% of their methane emissions without
hurting the bottom line. Doing so wouldhave the same long-term climate benefi ts
as immediately eliminating emissions
from more than half the cars on the road
worldwide,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s
executive director.
Natural gas accounted for almost half
the growth in global energy demand in 2018,
and 70% of the increase came in the United
States and China, where the rise in gas came
at the expense of coal. This switch to gas has
been a factor in preventing a faster rise in
global CO2 emissions in recent years.
A new study on The Role of Gas in Today’s
Energy Transitions, released by the IEA
alongside the methane tracker, shows
that an additional 1.2bn tonnes of CO2
could swift ly be abated by switching to gas
using existing infrastructure, if prices and
regulation are supportive. This would be
enough to bring global CO2 emissions back
down to where they were in 2013.
Taking both CO2 and methane emissions
into account, coal-to-gas switching is
currently able to reduce emissions on average
by 50% when producing electricity and
by 33% when providing heat. The level of
deployment of carbon capture, utilization and
storage technologies, for both coal and gas,
is another crucial factor for future emissions
from those two sectors.
While oil and gas companies use
monitoring and response primarily to
optimise operations, it can also serve the
purpose of reduce emissions.