If you break your arm, but don’t go for an x-ray, it doesn’t stop your arm being broken. Worse still, without good information about how your arm is broken, your doctor may have a harder time fixing it.
Gathering the best available information is the first step in remedying a problem. I’ll apply that same idea to the methane emissions from Alberta's oil and gas production.
Alberta often says it met its 2025 methane emissions target ahead of schedule. While Alberta was an early mover on methane (from regulating flaring in the 1990s to setting a 45 per cent reduction target, to allowing companies to use a range of leak detection methods), it only met its 2025 target early according to the province’s own model. That model relies heavily on the oil and gas industry self-reporting its own emissions. If you use data that is based on independent measurements like Environment and Climate Change Canada does, then Alberta is in fact the only major oil and gas producing province – behind B.C. and Saskatchewan – that did not meet its 2025 methane target early.
All this matters right now because, as part of the MOU signed in November, Alberta and Ottawa are in negotiations about the future of a whole host of climate rules. An agreement has been promised by April 1, and where it lands on methane will not just determine how much of this powerful greenhouse gas is kept out of the atmosphere over the next ten years, but also whether progress is being measured using credible data in a way other countries will accept. This is especially important if Canada wants to gain market access for its energy exports, including LNG, in markets such as Japan, South Korea, and the European Union – all of which will soon require proof from their suppliers that their energy products are low-carbon. Producers with strong regulations will be comparatively well-positioned to access these markets.
So, what explains the difference in the numbers here?
Alberta’s methane numbers are based on data self-reported by oil and gas companies. This is calculated by estimating how much methane each process or piece of equipment should emit, multiplied by an estimate of how many of those pieces of equipment a company has, multiplied by an estimate of how much product has flowed through them over the past year. They would then report this number to the regulator, who would then determine if the company had therefore complied with methane emissions limits.
None of this involves the actual measurement of gas escaping into the atmosphere. Nevertheless, until recently, this was the best method we had to reasonably quantify methane emissions and enforce the rules.
The National Inventory Report – and two peer-reviewed studies which validated it – uses an improved approach. The NIR model starts with industry estimates but also integrates actual measurement data recorded by researchers who fly over select oil and gas sites with methane-detecting sensors. By going out and actually measuring, researchers almost always find a lot more methane than was originally estimated – sometimes a lot more. This provides real-world data that is then extrapolated to get a more accurate estimate of methane emissions across the province.
This ought to be good news. For years, researchers and oil and gas engineers have suspected there’s a lot more methane being emitted than was being accounted for. And much like the broken arm, it’s far harder to fix something that you suspect is there but can’t see. Uncomfortably though, it also means that, while important progress has been made in Alberta, as of 2023 its reductions were closer to 35 per cent than the 52 per cent it claims.
Which brings us back to the MOU negotiation. Instead of following the federal methane rules, Alberta wishes to design and administer its own that is equivalent to the federal one. This is not unusual and strikes an important balance between the enforcement of reasonable national standards with the need for provincial autonomy. What’s now important is any proposed provincial regulations must have a credible likelihood of achieving equivalent emissions reductions on a broadly consistent timeline. Among other things, this ensures Alberta’s oil and gas companies are being held to a fair standard, compared with their competitors elsewhere in Canada.
What makes rules equivalent? Determining that is an extremely complex legal process, because there is more than one way of reaching a reasonably similar outcome. Here at the Pembina Institute, we will continue to follow those proceedings with interest – urging in particular for the negotiators to look to the example of B.C., where provincial methane rules – backed up by the same types of measurement data that the federal government is using – have resulted in significant reductions, even as oil and gas companies have increased production levels.
Much has been made of the potential pitfalls of the MOU, both for the climate and for our competitiveness in a low-carbon world. One very good outcome would be that Alberta is held to the same methane standard as the other producing provinces, using the most comprehensive, credible and where possible independently sourced emissions data, i.e. the federal data.
