How Canada is Approaching the Challenge of Methane Emissions

Interview with Marc D’Iorio, Assistant Deputy Minister - Science and Technology at Environment and Climate Change Canada

Canada has set the ambitious goal to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by at least 75% by 2030, compared to 2012 levels. Around 43% of Canada’s methane emissions stem from oil and gas operations, according to the 2021 Government of Canada inventory of greenhouse gases.

Is the country on track to meet those goals?  

Ahead of our Methane Mitigation Canada Summit, we put that question to Marc D’Iorio, Assistant Deputy Minister - Science and Technology at Environment and Climate Change Canada. In this interview, Marc D’Iorio offers insight into new regulations that is expected to help the country meet its methane emissions goals, discusses the challenges of reconciling bottom-up and top-down methane inventories from oil and natural gas production, and offers his advice to operators looking to get ahead of the regulatory curve.

Diana Davis, IX Network: How is Canada doing against its targets to reduce methane emissions in the oil and gas sector by 75% (from 2012 levels) by 2030?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Canada has regulations in place to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40-45% by 2025, compared to 2012 levels, and a 2021 review confirmed that we are on track to achieve this target. That said, we know that further action will be required to meet Canada’s newer goal—included in Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan—to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by at least 75% by 2030, compared to 2012 levels.

I would note that important progress has been made to date. Based on Canada’s annual National Inventory Report (NIR), fugitive sources of methane are comprised of flaring, venting and other unintentional emissions from fossil fuel production (coal, oil, and natural gas) with emissions from the oil and gas industry generally accounting for approximately 98% of total fugitive emissions in Canada. Data from the 2023 edition NIR shows that methane emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector were 2300 kt (57.5 Mt CO2 eq) in 2012 and were 1490 kt (37.2 Mt CO2-eq) in 2021, a decrease of 35%. 

Similarly, there have been reductions in methane intensity. Since 2005, over 200,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled and the number of producing wells has increased by 8%. Crude oil and natural gas production has also increased by 35%, mostly due to Canada’s Oil Sands.

Even with the increased output and activity, emissions from fugitive sources have decreased by 15 Mt (21%). This includes a 5.7 Mt (8.1%) decrease between 2005 and 2019 largely the result of measures to increase the conservation of natural gas (comprised mainly of methane), as well as a 9.0 Mt (14%) decrease between 2019 and 2020 that coincides with federal and provincial measures to reduce methane emissions from the upstream oil and gas industry. No significant change was observed between 2020 and 2021 (-0.23 Mt or -0.42%).

Our department is currently developing strengthened methane regulations to meet our 2030 objectives and we plan to release proposed regulations later this year.

Diana Davis, IX Network: What can you tell me about what those new regulations might look like?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: In November 2022, our department published a proposed regulatory framework, which outlined potential regulatory measures that are under consideration, following a source-by-source approach to reducing methane emissions.

The proposed framework would achieve Canada’s methane reduction target by expanding the scope of the existing regulations to apply to a wider set of sources, eliminating exclusions, and driving as many individual sources as possible toward zero emissions.

For instance, we are looking at expanding the application of the regulatory measures to apply to virtually all facilities potentially handling natural gas, and requiring non-emitting equipment when feasible.

Over the past several months we have been consulting a variety of stakeholders on these measures, which are still under development, and, as you mentioned, we plan to publish proposed regulations later this year.

Diana Davis, IX Network: What exactly is the Department for Environment and Climate Change Canada, Science & Technology Branch doing to support the oil and gas industry to meet those targets?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Scientists in the S&T branch are actively studying different methods for measuring atmospheric methane and analyzing the data to improve our knowledge of oil and gas industry emissions. These efforts include the analysis of observations from Canada’s ground-based methane measurement network, measurement campaigns and the analysis of satellite observations of methane.

Improved scientific knowledge and more comprehensive data are used to develop accurate emission estimates, which informs Canada’s annual NIR. The implementation of methodological improvements leads to revisions of previous estimates to maintain a consistent historical trend in emissions and removals.

As observing capacity and analysis methods improve, we learn more about the complementary nature between the atmospheric observations and the traditional (activity-based) inventory methods, which will inform future improvements to Canada’s NIR.

Diana Davis, IX Network: I understand that recent studies have identified that bottom-up inventories underestimate methane emissions by up to 90% in the oil and gas industries. Why is there such a large discrepancy?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: In accordance with United Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reporting requirements and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines on the preparation of national inventories, inventory methods rely on understanding and quantifying emissions and removals by individual source categories and greenhouse gases. This approach is generally referred to as “bottom-up”.

Other approaches to estimating emissions are also available, based on inverse modeling of GHG emissions or removals derived from measurements of atmospheric gas concentrations. These approaches have been referred to as “top-down”. The 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (Vol 1, chap 6) provides guidance on the use of “top-down” estimates to validate inventory estimates and improve their accuracy.

Research by scientists in both government and academia has produced “top-down” estimates of methane emissions from the Canadian oil and gas industry. Results suggest that bottom-up inventory methods may underestimate some sources of fugitive methane emissions in oil and gas operations.

Despite on-going data and methodological improvements, this category remains a monitoring challenge with tens of thousands of facilities, hundreds of thousands of wells and millions of components with the potential to emit. Many of these recent studies highlight the significance of “super-emitters”, a small number of facilities that would contribute disproportionately to total emissions. 

Resolving the discrepancies between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches to estimate fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas operations requires separating out the contribution of individual components to total facility emissions; “top-down” approaches are now able to achieve this level of resolution.

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is actively working with researchers to understand the discrepancies between “bottom-up” and “top-down” approaches with the goal of improving the accuracy of inventory estimates in future editions of Canada’s National Inventory Report (NIR). Advances in reconciling “top-down” and “bottom-up” estimates could also lead to improvements in other inventory sectors, such as waste and agriculture.

Although many atmospheric measurement studies have shown that there is a large gap between top-down and bottom-up approaches, improvements to the inventory means that this gap is beginning to close.

Continuous improvement of emission accuracy is a key principle of Canada’s annual NIR which is based on bottom-up approaches. Recent editions included significant improvements to the estimation of methane emissions from landfills, as well as a new fugitive emission model to estimate methane emissions from components in the upstream oil and gas industry. More improvements can be expected in future editions.

There are many varied sources of methane from operations. Methane is released when natural gas is flared or vented and is also released from small leaks from valves and other equipment used in drilling and production.  These emissions are challenging to quantify, and can be significant

Efforts are ongoing to reconcile the differences between emission estimates from bottom-up activity-based methods and top-down atmospheric measurement methods, including working with leading academics in the field to begin to incorporate measurement results into inventory estimates.

Diana Davis, IX Network: What can the industry do to achieve a more accurate picture of methane emissions from oil and gas operations in Canada?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Industry collaboration on measurements, research, and inventory methodological refinements, with atmospheric scientists and inventory experts is essential to ensuring that we have the most accurate methane emissions and are tracking our progress over time.

Access to data collected from a wide variety of sources (including from industry itself) would also help to provide a complete picture of methane emissions at the facility and component level.

Diana Davis, IX Network: The technology to detect and measure methane emissions is rapidly evolving. Are there particular technologies – or combination of technologies - that you see playing a key role in the years ahead to quantify methane emission inventories?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: There are multiple new technologies that could play a key role in observing methane in the years ahead:

• Aircraft LIDAR imaging observations enable regional scale mapping of methane emission sources to quantify emissions and identify additional unknown fugitive emission sources. So far, this new technology has had a lot of success when applied to western Canadian oil and gas emissions.
• Multiple new satellites for measuring methane are being launched by space agencies, commercial entities and even NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in the next few years. Some of these satellites will give global coverage that can find and quantify major methane sources across the world.
• Other complementary satellites have much less coverage but have the capability to zoom-in on targets of interest with high spatial resolution data that helps lower detection limits to quantify smaller and smaller methane sources. It is a rapidly evolving field, so it will be very interesting to see where satellite capabilities for methane lead us over the next 3-5 years.   

Given the rapidly expanding scientific work to measure and quantify methane emissions, it may not be sufficient to rely solely on one technology to characterize emissions.

It will be important to have a variety of methods, that can be compared and contrasted at different scales across time and space to really give us a sense of whether we are meeting our commitments.

This includes things like satellites and aircraft measurements, but also could include measurements from drones, vehicles, and regional background measurements.

It will be important to have a fit for purpose approach, where technologies are used and adapted depending on the sector we are looking at.

Diana Davis, IX Network: What can Canadian oil and gas companies be doing right now to play a more active role in measuring and reducing methane emissions from the sector?

Marc D’Iorio, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Over the last several years, the oil and gas industry has begun taking action to reduce methane emissions, partly in response to regulatory requirements by the federal and provincial governments, but there’s much more work to do.

Companies can play an important and positive role in Canada’s efforts to reduce methane by working to improve the monitoring and measurement of methane from their facilities, and by reducing the venting of methane from their facilities and eliminating methane leaks, through actions that go beyond the current regulatory requirements.

This would also help set them up well for meeting the strengthened methane regulations that are expected to come into force in the years ahead.

Interested in learning more about this topic?

Marc D’Iorio will be speaking at our upcoming Methane Mitigation Canada Summit. With updated federal regulations due later this year, it is now imperative that the oil and gas industry come together to identify, measure, monitor and eliminate methane emissions across their operations while meeting the global demand for affordable and reliable oil and natural gas.

Join over 150 of your peers at the Methane Mitigation Canada Summit in Calgary on September 6-7 to discuss how to leverage cost-effective solutions to identify, measure, monitor and eliminate emissions. Download the agenda for more information.