IF NG Producers Monitored Leaks. What Would Happen? They'd Call It "Certified Gas" And Charge More For It

And here we are . . .


A growing effort by the fossil fuel industry to sell natural gas as a low-carbon fuel is little more than greenwashing, according to a new report by climate advocacy organizations. Gas producers looking to differentiate their products as clean fuel are increasingly seeking “gas certification” from third-party companies, which monitor wells and other gas infrastructure for climate-wrecking methane emissions.

However, gas certification is an unregulated industry. The monitoring systems companies employ routinely miss the methane they were designed to detect, according to a June 18 report by Oil Change International and Earthworks. “Certified gas is a greenwashing scam,” said Dakota Raynes, a researcher with Earthworks and an author of the report. “There is not nearly enough evidence from the certifiers or the oil and gas industry itself that this gas is actually indeed [associated with] lower methane emissions.” Project Canary, one of the leading emissions monitoring companies offering low-methane certification to oil and gas companies—and a primary focus of the report—contested the findings. The firm said it was not certifying any of the sites included in the report, which it said “contains numerous inaccuracies and mischaracterizations.”

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The June report was based on 81 surveys by Earthworks of 38 different oil and gas production sites where gas certification companies had deployed continuous monitoring equipment. Using a type of thermal camera known as optical gas imaging (OGI), Earthworks detected 23 pollution events. Earthworks and Oil Change International then filed public record requests with the state of Colorado to see if the same pollution events had been detected by the gas certification companies. With the exception of one such event, the answer was no, according to the report.

Twelve of the 23 emission events documented by Earthworks occurred at sites with Project Canary monitors, only one of which was detected by Project Canary, the report said. The environmental groups also noted that Project Canary’s monitors were down, or inoperable, 26 percent of the time over an 11-month period. But company officials said their sensors weren’t deployed to detect methane emissions and that “none of the sites referenced in the report were ever certified by Project Canary.” The company’s monitors at those locations detected volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOC detection is often used as a proxy for methane detection as emissions from oil and gas wells typically contain a mix of each.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25062024/low-emission-gas-certification-is-greenwashing-climate-advocates-conclude-in-a-contested-new-report/