The methane chart below is another reminder of how important it is for governments to increase their demands on methane emitters to find solutions to cut leakage. The current stated policies are grossly inadequate, and while we are seeing some of the majors taking proactive steps to reduce emissions, the problems are more acute among the independents in the West as well as abandoned wells that might have no current ownership and operators outside the US and Europe. We keep talking about the need for COP26 to focus on natural gas, and this would be one of the key issues on which a global agreement would help. See several of our ESG reports for more on this subject.
Source: IEA, October 2021