Investigations done by a group of non-profits in Mexico have found that Pemex and other Mexican oil and gas companies are lagging behind on their obligations to identify, report and mitigate methane emissions from their installations.
Methane is a threat to the climate as it is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and the Mexican government regulation requires oil and gas companies to identify and measure their methane emissions and submit a so-called program for prevention and integrated control of methane emissions (PPCIEM) to the environmental regulator.
However, investigators at the Mexican Methane Emissions Observatory, an alliance of three non-profit organizations, found that so far only 7% of regulated entities have submitted some of the required documents.
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Pemex, which dominates the sector, only submitted documents for two of its regulated entities – though the investigators highlighted that it was not certain whether this included all of the installations.
For the vast majority of installations in Mexico, there is no certainty on compliance, they found. The documents were requested via Mexico’s transparency institute from three different regulators and the energy ministry in November last year.
“Controlling the emissions of methane is what Mexico can and should do to comply with its international commitments,” said Adrian Fernandez, a former environmental official, who founded the Mexico Climate Initiative, one of the nonprofits backing the alliance.
“There are huge challenges in mitigating methane emissions but at least in the oil and gas sector the technology already exists and is accessible,” he told reporters in an interview.
Recall that last year, satellites recorded two vast methane leaks at an offshore platform belonging to Pemex in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mexico is the world’s tenth biggest emitter of methane, according to the Global Methane Tracker 2022, published by the International Energy Agency and researchers have increasingly shown that reducing methane output is vital to keeping global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius – above pre-industrial times – in order to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
