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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Dozens of oil and gas
companies have committed to report more accurately on and, ultimately, reduce
emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane which is liable to leak from
oilfields and pipelines, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Oil
majors such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Eni, Equinor and Total have signed up for
the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) under the umbrella of the United
Nations, the European Union and non-governmental organization (NGO) the
Environmental Defense Fund.
Methane has over 80 times the heat trapping
potential of carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere and
recent analysis of satellite data suggests leaks from the oil and gas sector are
much bigger than initially thought. The new standard aims to deliver a 45 per
cent reduction in the industry’s methane emissions by 2025, and a 60-75 per cent
reduction by 2030.
While OGMP says its 62 members represent 30% of the
world’s oil and gas production, U.S. oil and gas majors such as Chevron and
Exxon are not involved. Nor are any Russian producers nor any national oil
companies apart from the United Arab Emirate’s Adnoc.
The OGMP comes on
top of individual corporate pledges to reduce methane leaks, and the Oil and Gas
Climate Initiative (OGCI) which is overseen by the firms themselves and includes
U.S. majors and some national oil companies. It has also set a target of
reducing methane intensity to 0.25% by 2025 across its members’
operations.
The OGMP says it differs from other initiatives in that it
requires members to report methane emissions at an asset level, rather than
across the whole company, and in that it covers facilities in joint ventures,
even if the operator of such sites has not subscribed to OGMP.
It puts
more pressure on oil and gas producers to actually measure methane leaks, rather
than extrapolate from engineering calculations, and also covers a company’s
whole supply chain - crucial for methane-heavy commodities like gas, which often
travels hundreds of kilometers through complex infrastructure.
The OGMP
will publish a annual public report on companies’ performance against targets,
said Manfredi Caltagirone, energy and climate manager at the UN environment
program. The EU, the world’s biggest gas import market which gets most of its
gas from Russia, is currently revamping its own methane regulations.
As
MRC informed
previously, global oil demand may have already peaked, according to BP's
latest long-term energy outlook, as the COVID-19 pandemic kicks the world
economy onto a weaker growth trajectory and accelerates the shift to cleaner
fuels.
Earlier this year, BP said the deadly coronavirus outbreak could
cut global oil
demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020, putting pressure on Opec producers and
Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in check.
And in September 2019,
six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North
Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announced the
creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam
crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels.
The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP,
LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also
significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in
R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning
their base chemical production to renewable electricity.
Ethylene and
propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene
(PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,594,510 tonnes in the first nine
months of 2020, up by 1% year on year. Only high denstiy polyethylene (HDPE)
shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market
reached 880,130 tonnes in the nine months of 2020 (calculated using the formula:
production minus exports plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1
January, 2020). Supply increased exclusively of PP random copolymer. |
