Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies methodologies for measurement and reporting of methane emissions from upstream oil and gas assets including oil and natural gas exploration and production, oil and natural gas gathering and processing and LNG liquefaction. It provides guidelines for verification. Emissions from inactive wells, temporarily plugged wells, and permanently plugged and abandoned wells are in scope. This document provides guidance for source-level and site-level quantification (including uncertainty estimation) and reconciliation, enabling a undertaking-specific annualized estimate. This document may be used for auditing, verification, and regulatory compliance purposes.

This document includes guidance for use of direct measurement, modelling, engineering estimates, representative studies, and emission factor generation. It describes the practical challenges associated with methane quantification from subsea infrastructure. It includes providing guidance on data conditioning, source category delineation, source category mapping, sample size determination, and annualization.

This document does not include methane reduction targets or cover coal, LNG, midstream, downstream or shipping. It also does not include detailed descriptions of measuring equipment, calibration procedures, or specific measurement methods.

Purpose

Quantification

The standards will help competent authorities in individual Member States to ensure that operators effectively comply with the obligations laid down in this Regulation.

 Assessment and quantification of the methane emissions in upstream oil and gas operations leads to programmes to effectively reduce methane emissions from operated assets.

With view to the upcoming European regulation on methane emission reduction in the energy sector, the oil and gas sector needs to standardize their quantification methods to be prepared for the regulatory requirement of mandatory regular methane emission quantification and reporting,

This standard provides aligned procedures for methane quantification built on the best practices in support of the operator’s obligations for methane emission quantification and reporting,

The standard can be used for auditing and verification purposes.

Context of the 3 ISO standards on methane emissions :

There are currently many parallel initiatives to standardise around methane and methane emissions, as this is recognised as one of the critical areas in the move towards net-zero.

ISO TC 67 (Oil and gas industries including lower carbon energy) have been asked to bring global experts together to deliver high level standards based on a consensus of international expertise.

One key driver for this initiative is a European Commission’s request is to provide three standards on Methane as reference documents for implementing the European Union Methane Emissions Reduction Regulation:

1. Quantification

2. Leak Detection & Repair

3. Flaring & Venting

Similar methane emission regulations are currently under consideration in USA and other parts of the World.

The development of standards for onshore midstream and downstream gas infrastructure is progressing currently through European Standards Body CEN Technical Committee TC 234 Gas infrastructure.

The European scope for upstream oil and gas, including offshore infrastructure sits with CEN TC 12, which historically has looked to adopt international standards by supporting the development of standards in ISO TC 67.

Thus, alignment of developing standards between CEN/TC 234 and ISO/TC 67 (CEN/TC 12), and leverage existing IOGP publications (on Methane, Flaring & Venting etc.), OGMP 2.0, et al., is essential.

Proposal for development of standards for oil & upstream gas, including offshore gas infrastructure:

1. Methane emissions are a global problem and the development of standards to reduce methane emissions need to be undertaken at an international level involving global experts.

2. It was agreed by CEN/TC 12 and ISO/TC 67 that the technical documents required to support the EU regulation will be developed under ISO/TC 67 in collaboration with CEN/TC 12 under Vienna Agreement (= joint Work Group, parallel commenting, voting, and publication).

3. To achieve standards of value to users and regulators, it will be important to ensure that the scope of is centred in the first edition to the priority needs and that focus is kept on higher-lever requirements while reference is made to more detailed good practice.

4. We encourage methane emissions experts from around the World to join this very important initiative and help their organisations and national bodies to deliver globally consistent standards for managing methane emissions.