ExxonMobil has agreed to join the United Nation’s Oil and Gas Methane Partnership, the Texas-based oil and gas giant told the Financial Times today. Companies that join the partnership commit to the only comprehensive, measurement-based international reporting framework, which improves the accuracy and transparency of methane emissions data from the oil and gas sector. Other members include Repsol, ADNOC, Shell, Eni, and Petrobras.
The move is a notable U-turn from ExxonMobil, which urged its shareholders at its annual meeting this May to vote against joining the programme, arguing that doing so would be ‘duplicative’ and ‘unnecessary’, according to the FT.
In May 2022, ExxonMobil announced its support for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative's (OGCI) Aiming for Zero Methane Emissions Initiative, a CEO-led programme of 12 energy companies targeting net zero emissions at their own operations by 2030. The initiative does not involve any external emissions reporting. ExxonMobil says on its website that it has reduced methane emissions from all its operated assets by nearly half as of year-end 2021, compared to 2016, without providing numbers.
The West’s largest oil producer told the FT that ‘advances in technology’ meant it was now in a position to join the UN monitoring programme.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, responsible for around one quarter of emissions, closely followed by the energy sector, with natural gas and oil making the largest contribution. Methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2 (around 12 years compared with centuries for CO2), but it is a much more potent greenhouse gas, absorbing much more energy while it exists in the atmosphere.
The IEA says that there is also a compelling business case to tackle methane emissions in the energy sector, as captured methane can often be monetarised directly. On top of that, countries like the US are moving to impose penalties on methane emissions, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) set to introduce a charge of $900 per tonne of methane emitted in 2024, increasing to $1,500 per tonne in 2026.