Today, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials will hold a hearing titled “America Leads the Way: Our History as the Global Leader at Reducing Emissions.”
It’s an opportune time to be discussing American leadership in greenhouse gas emissions reduction. On Thursday, diplomats, state leaders, advocates, activists, the private sector, and researchers will convene in Dubai to discuss global energy and climate policy including methane emissions management at the 28th U.N. Conference of the Parties, or COP28. And in the United States, President Biden plans to build on his administration’s aggressive climate policy with the imminent release of several methane rules targeting the oil and natural gas industry, including EPA’s controversial proposed methane rule.
With methane management front and center, it’s important to note that America’s leading oil and natural gas producers have successfully reduced total methane volumes in each major producing basin over the last five years while simultaneously achieving record production:
Data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program shows that between 2018 and 2022, total methane emissions volumes in each of the country’s top oil and natural gas producing basins declined significantly across the board.
The largest decrease in total volume of emissions occurred in the Anadarko Basin, located in Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The Arkoma Basin was responsible for the largest percentage decrease in methane emissions, reducing emissions of the greenhouse gas by an impressive 77 percent during the five-year time period.
Notably, operators were able to reduce absolute methane emissions while increasing domestic production to record levels. Following the economic downturn due to COVID-19, companies responded quickly and responsibly to the sudden shifts in supply and demand resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. By the second half of the year, top-producing basins including the Permian were hitting record oil and natural gas production volumes; and importantly, doing so without a corresponding increase in methane emissions.
Voluntary measures like the Environmental Partnership, an initiative representing nearly 70 percent of U.S. onshore oil and gas operations, are crucial to driving methane reductions across the supply chain. The most recent Environmental Partnership annual report details how companies cut flaring nearly in half in 2021 and followed that milestone in 2022 by achieving another 14 percent reduction in total flare volumes and a 2.4 percent reduction in flare intensity from the previous year. In 2021 and 2022, U.S. oil and gas production grew by 5.6 percent and 4 percent, respectively.
Bottom Line: It is possible to have energy security and reduce emissions – a fact the U.S. oil and natural gas industry continues to demonstrate.
