Methane Emissions and Green House Gases Reduction go Hand-in-Hand

October 17, 2018: Methane Emissions and Green House Gases Reduction go Hand-in-Hand

In an article from Reuter’s last week, Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden said, “Shell’s core business is, and will be for the foreseeable future, very much in oil and gas… and particularly in natural gas.”

And it’s not just Shell (RDSa.AS) that is betting that the demand for natural gas will continue to increase for decades, along with BP (BP.L) and Total (TOTF.PA) also rising to the demand to develop cleaner energy sources, they are investing more and more in solar and wind power, electric vehicle technology and even forestation.

Still, they see oil, and especially natural gas, the least polluting fossil fuel, playing a major role throughout the decades of transition and beyond as demand for electricity and plastics grows.

By 2035, Shell expects global gas demand to grow annually by 2 percent, twice the pace of worldwide energy demand, van Beurden said.

This increase in demand is just one reason that the efforts of ONE Future make sense for oil and natural gas companies. ONE Future’s members begin with a focus on the outcome we want to achieve. In the case of natural gas methane emissions, our desired outcome is to collectively achieve an average rate of emissions across all facilities that is equivalent to one percent (or less) of total produced and delivered natural gas.

Qatar, one of the world’s largest natural gas suppliers, is set to grow its liquefied natural gas (LNG) capacity by over 40 percent by the next decade to around 110 million tonnes per year, as demand for the super-chilled fuel is set to soar, particularly in fast-growing economies such as China and India.

“We believe that natural gas will continue to play a key role, not as a so-called transition fuel but rather as a destination fuel,” Qatar Petroleum CEO Saad Al Kaabi said.

Shell is investing more than any other of its peers in clean energy, spending $1 billion to $2 billion a year on renewables and low-carbon energy. That compares with a total annual spending budget of $25 billion-$30 billion.

The investments “might even make people think we have gone soft on the future of oil and gas. If they did think that… they would be wrong,” van Beurden said.

It’s important in the years to come that we focus on reducing methane and protecting our environment in every way possible, all while ensuring natural gas is a sustainable energy source for decades to come.

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