ATHENS, Greece – The players in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector are well aware that they are in the ‘hot seat’ at the ongoing 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Summit, hence, the industry is pressing for collaborative decarbonization strategy that will mainly focus on mitigating methane emissions through the chain of their operations.

During the World LNG Summit here, US firm BRG Energy & Climate Chair and Managing Director Christopher Goncalves stated that “for the global gas and LNG industry, methane mitigation is a critical climate imperative driven by a mountain array of emerging data resources and international legislative, regulatory and trade initiatives.”

He primarily acknowledged that “producers, consumers and shippers (in the LNG industry) face social and investor pressure to reduce supply chain emissions.”

For some bits of positive upshots, he emphasized that at this point, more than 150 countries already signed the Global Methane Pledge, an initiative that will catalyze global action on reducing methane emissions – primarily for the global oil and gas industry.

Another favorable development had been the move of the United States in August last year on the introduction of methane control regulation and fees; while in November this year, the European Union (EU) already agreed on a law to monitor and penalize methane emissions of oil and gas imports.

Further, Goncalves conveyed that “China is expected to unveil plan for cutting methane emissions” during the COP28 summit in Dubai.

Based on culled data, he explained that “despite the small share of emissions of methane (CH4) by volume, the global warming potential (GWP) impact by 2042 of one ton of CH4 emitted in 2022 will be 86 times higher than a ton of CO2 (carbon dioxide) emitted in 2022.”

He added “the GWP20 impact of the 2022 emissions of CH4 is equal to 24% of the total greenhouse gas impact on global warming.”

Amid intensified calls for methane emissions reduction in the industry, the BRG Energy executive qualified that the global gas and LNG sector has already been funneling investments into cleaning up their chain of operations – including tapping energy supply sources from renewables, as well as deployment of more energy efficient equipment and low GHG-intensity fuels.

Onward, he specified that “the critical imperative is lowering methane emissions,” although there is caution that additional investments on CH4 abatement may result in higher costs for consumers.

Ben Dell, founder and managing director of investment firm Kimmeridge, admitted that the major question thrown LNG industry’s way is if it can viably take its stride into the net zero pathway.

He, nevertheless, reckoned that there is a major catch to that: “is the consumer really willing to pay that price?” – with him emphasizing that such decarbonization roadmap for the industry will entail billion-dollars of investments to be shelled out by various players down the road.

That concern was echoed by Carlos de la Vega, vice president for Marketing and Commercial Development at Sempra Infrastructure, when he said that “until we understand, money will not be spent because somebody will eventually have to pay for that.”

In his view, LNG decarbonization as well as the entire chain of operations of the oil and gas sector will involve “a step process and it cannot be done immediately,” albeit he asserted that there are lot of things already being done on the LNG front – including investment plays for hydrogen, injecting energy efficiency in operations and the deployment of innovative technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS), carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) as well as procuring renewables to run the LNG facilities.

On the sphere of methane emissions reduction, Saima Yarrow, head of LNG at MiQ, a company that has been undertaking independent certification for emissions reduction, indicated that the key in measuring tangible emissions reduction will be on capturing accurate and transparent data; and for the LNG players knowing fully all the components of their supply chain operations.

“It’s important to know your supply chain emissions. We all have this responsibility to demand transparency from operators. And once that data is obtained, how is that data achieved and how accurate,” she stressed.

Yarrow noted “we cannot reduce emissions if we can’t see them. How can we reduce something that we don’t know? If you don’t have independent audit for that number, how do you know if it’s accurate? How then can you depend on that number?”

She similarly pointed out that while “it’s easy for everybody to just take care of their own supply chain,” there is degree of difficulty in pursuing industry-wide efforts on reducing emissions; as well as on collecting data on a harmonized way.