OREANDA-NEWS. October 07, 2014. BG Group has joined a host of international oil and gas companies, governments and environmental groups in a new partnership aimed at helping companies better understand and manage their methane emissions.

The Climate and Clean Air Coalition Oil & Gas Methane Partnership was launched this week at the UN Secretary General's Climate Summit in New York. BG Group is a founding partner of the initiative, with Statoil of Norway, Pemex of Mexico, Southwestern Energy of the United States, ENI of Italy and PTT of Thailand. Other partners include the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme and agencies representing around a dozen national governments.

Partnership in line with methane strategy
Chris Cox, Executive Vice President for BG Advance, BG Group's technical function, represented the company at the launch. He said the partnership was in line with BG Group's methane strategy, which focuses on creating robust and credible industry guidelines for the disclosure of emissions data; assessing our own emissions with a view to improving our performance, and; addressing methane emissions through technical innovation.

"BG Group is proud to be a founding partner of this important initiative," Chris said. "Methane emissions comprise only a small proportion of BG Group's overall greenhouse gas emissions. But reducing methane emissions has the potential to deliver disproportionally large near-term environmental benefits, making the partnership a priority for us.

Minimising upstream emissions needed to meet climate goals
After agriculture, the oil and gas industry is the largest man-made emitter of methane.

The International Energy Agency has identified minimising methane emissions from upstream oil and gas production among four key global mitigation opportunities that can contribute significant, cost-effective greenhouse gas savings. Having all the mitigation measures in place is required to meet global climate goals.

Oil and gas companies signing up to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition Oil & Gas Methane Partnership commit their operations included in the pact to a range of approaches designed to better manage methane emissions. These include:

Surveys to identify sources of methane emissions from their operations;

Evaluating cost-effective options to address the sources of emissions;

Sharing approaches and practices to improve the performance of the industry in reducing emissions; and

Transparently reporting progress on reducing methane emissions.

BG Group collaborating on voluntary climate platform
It was also announced at the UN Secretary General's Climate Summit that BG Group is collaborating with several national and international oil and gas companies on an initiative to provide a voluntary platform to address key climate risks, to share industry best practices and to encourage meaningful action and coordination on climate change. The initiative is the only one of its kind that seeks to capture all that the industry is doing about climate change, and drive thinking about what it is prepared to do.