Report Shows Targeting Food and Manure Waste and Oil and Gas Production Could Cut Methane Emissions 30 Percent by 2030: Part 2

The window to meaningfully bend the curve on climate change is shortening, prompting countries around the world to figure out how to cut their planet-warming methane emissions in hopes of making big impact, and as quickly as possible.

This two-part series (PART ONE HERE) explores potential to drastically reduce methane release by focusing on three top emitters: food waste, farm manure, and oil and gas production. Read on for an in-depth comparison of cost and impact of various measures targeting each of these sources, with a focus on anaerobic digestion on the organics front, and on new emissions-mitigation measures imposed on the oil and gas sector.

Oil and natural gas operations are the largest industrial source of methane pollution in the U.S., but a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule, which took effect in May 2024, is cracking down on this sector with a laundry list of requirements. The New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), which regulate new and existing oil and gas production facilities, mandate equipment upgrades such as replacing leaky gas-powered pneumatic controllers at oil and gas wellheads with zero-emission ones and technology to identify super-emitter events. There are new requirements for regular emissions monitoring and reporting; tightened limits on gas flaring; and other constraints.

The NSPS’s impact could be far reaching in driving down emissions and quickly—achieving an 86 percent abatement per year of overall U.S. methane emissions from oil and gas production over 2020 levels. And it could drive a 54 percent reduction of total oil and gas industry methane emissions over 2020.

Nonprofit Energy Vision released a report that calculates the impact and capital cost of mitigation measures outlined in the NSPS.

The study identifies this federal rule as the most impactful and cheapest mechanism to cut overall U.S. methane compared to targeting other top emitters, namely organics (though it does not discount other options, namely anaerobic digestion).

The cumulative capital cost (CaPex) to oil and gas producers to comply with the NSPS from 2024 to 2029 is $20.7B, Energy Vision reports. Once in full compliance, net annual costs (capital and operational) to the industry are projected to be under $2B per year through 2038.

And the industry could potentially recover compliance costs through the sale of increased volumes of gas that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere. The additional captured gas from 2024 to 2029 is valued at $3.6B.

Energy Vision’s number crunching goes on to indicate that fully complying with the NSPS could result in 6,280 metric tons of methane reduction per million dollars of CaPex. And it would cut oil and gas producers’ contribution to overall U.S. emissions by 17.5 percent.

For perspective on the relative significance of that impact and cost, study author Michael Lerner looked at anaerobic digestion (AD) to tackle two other top methane emitters: food waste and farm manure.  His findings conclude that processing these organics via AD is the “biggest bang for the buck” in organic waste methane abatement. But despite the technology’s potential to move the needle, the impact per dollar falls significantly short of what is achievable targeting oil and gas emissions via the NSPS.

Building enough AD plants to cut U.S. emissions by 13.6 percent would deliver a reduction of 1,752 metric tons of methane per million dollars of infrastructure to tackle food waste. And it would yield 1,068 metric tons of methane reduction per million dollars to manage farm manure.

Returning to oil and gas, the EPA estimates that about half of the methane emissions reduction achievable via NSPS would come from enhancements at “stripper wells.” Just plugging the leakiest 5 percent of these wells – roughly 35,000 units—would have by far the greatest impact for the cost than any other methane mitigation option that Energy Vision assessed, whether to address oil and gas or organics emissions.

This small fraction of wells produces an estimated half of all stripper well methane emissions, or a quarter of all emissions from U.S. oil and gas production. Plugging the leakiest 5 percent of them would yield a 5.4 percent cut in overall net U.S. methane per year. This measure would equate to 18,887 metric tons of methane reduction per million dollars of CaPex, Energy Vision concludes.

“That’s not to imply that the other options are inefficient; but rather it reflects the massive amounts of methane that are spewing into the atmosphere from these leakiest stripper wells. And it shows that plugging them is incredibly cost-effective,” Lerner says.

Conversely, when zeroing in on abandoned oil and gas wells—there are about 2.1 million of them in the U.S.—Energy Vision found plugging them would have relatively small impact. This measure would generate just 62.7 metric tons of methane reduction per million dollars of CaPex. And these projects are involved in that their locations may not be known, and operational details can be hard to come by.

While the NSPS has passed into law, implementation could stall and or some provisions may be weakened as some states have filed lawsuits.

“EPA’s new NSPS for the oil and gas sector have enormous methane reduction potential if fully realized. But if they’re weakened, delayed, or scrapped by lawsuits, then our prime targets should be plugging the leakiest 5 percent of stripper wells as soon as possible,” Lerner says.

Even with pending lawsuits, he says, “Given the urgency of tackling methane now, we are cautiously optimistic that emissions will start coming down significantly in the oil and gas sector as a result of these standards.”

The EPA has stipulated various compliance phase-in periods and envisions methane reductions from the NSPS slowly ramping up from 2024 to 2027; picking up full steam in 2028; and reaching the full level in 2029.