Tackling Methane Leakage from Oil and Gas

A statement urging the inclusion of ambitious methane performance standards within the European Green Deal to leverage Europe's market position as a net importer of natural gas to reduce global oil and gas methane emissions.

• Methane is a greenhouse gas with a short-term climate impact 84 times more potent than CO2, and emissions from oil and gas production, processing, transmission, and distribution exceed 6.7 billion tons of CO2 equivalent annually, representing 16 percent of all human-made CO2 emissions.
• The oil and gas sector is viewed as "low-hanging fruit" for methane abatement because technical solutions to fix leaks already exist and are often cost-effective, yet the industry has lacked the urgency and scale to address them without a clear signal to act.
• Several major European oil and gas companies, including BP, Equinor, ENI, Shell, and Total, have committed via the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative to a "near-zero methane" future, aiming for a methane intensity of 0.20 percent by 2025.
• Voluntary commitments are insufficient; ambitious regulation is required to make methane intensity targets enforceable and to extend requirements to operators, such as national oil companies, that currently ignore the methane threat.
• The European Green Deal should establish methane emissions performance standards for operators within the EU and for companies importing gas into European markets, utilizing Europe's position as the world's largest net importer of natural gas to influence suppliers like Russia, Algeria, Qatar, and the United States.

APA

RMI (2020). Tackling Methane Leakage from Oil and Gas. https://rmi.org/resources/tackling-methane-leakage-from-oil-and-gas/

Chicago

RMI. Tackling Methane Leakage from Oil and Gas. 2020. https://rmi.org/resources/tackling-methane-leakage-from-oil-and-gas/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=RMI |title=Tackling Methane Leakage from Oil and Gas |date=29 April 2020 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/tackling-methane-leakage-from-oil-and-gas/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{rmi2020tackling, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Tackling Methane Leakage from Oil and Gas}}, publisher = {RMI}, year = {2020}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/tackling-methane-leakage-from-oil-and-gas/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }