PARIS (AFP) – The world’s major oil and gas companies have mostly vowed to stop leaking the extremely potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, but big loopholes in their pledges risk “exacerbating the climate crisis,” a report warned Thursday.
The report from the think tank Carbon Tracker was published as nations gathered in Azerbaijan for the latest round of UN climate talks during what is expected to be the hottest year in recorded history.
Methane is responsible for about one-third of global warming from greenhouse gases, and a huge amount is emitted by oil and gas projects.
At the previous round of UN talks in Dubai last year, 52 big oil and gas firms pledged to reach “near zero” methane emissions by 2030.
But the Carbon Tracker report found that “major loopholes” in these pledges meant they did not cover a large amount of methane from the firms’ operations.
The think tank accused the energy giants of “exacerbating the climate crisis by failing to set strict targets to stop methane leaking into the atmosphere”.
“Oil and gas companies are paying lip service to climate action while emissions from their products are fuelling increasingly severe storms, droughts, floods and heatwaves around the world,” said Olivia Bisel, a Carbon Tracker analyst and lead report author.
The report ranked the climate targets of 27 oil and gas producing companies, including US giant ExxonMobil, Britain’s BP, France’s TotalEnergies and Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Saudi Aramco.
One big loophole the report identified was that a large amount of methane is emitted during what are called joint ventures, when the oil and gas giants team up with other firms.
The climate pledges of all but one firm — Chevron — did not cover methane leakage during these joint ventures, according to the report.
“This is a particular blind spot” for companies like Italy’s Eni and TotalEnergies, which have stakes in assets operated by other companies in high methane-emitting countries such as Algeria and Egypt, the report said.
Most company targets also do not include “midstream” infrastructure such as gas pipelines or gas tankers, despite them emitting significant amounts of methane, it added.
And few of the firms have committed to completely eliminating gas flaring, a particularly dirty practice that is a key source of methane leakage, it added.
According to Carbon Tracker’s rankings, Eni had the strongest emission-reduction targets, followed by French firms TotalEnergies and Repsol, then BP.
But none of the plans aligned with the overarching global goal of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, it said.
Methane is the second largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. Around 60 percent of annual methane emissions is caused by humans, one third of which comes from the energy sector, according to the International Energy Agency.
Its warming power is more than 80 times greater over 20 years than that of CO2, but its lifespan is shorter, making it an important lever in attempts to limit global warming in the short term.
Despite being considered to be easily avoidable at little cost, global methane emissions continue to rise.
The report was released a day after 2024 was projected to set a new record level of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels such as oil and gas.
