MiQ Advances Methane Emissions Transparency in Natural Gas Exports with Groundbreaking Supply Chain Protocol

HOUSTON, March 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- MiQ, the not-for-profit global leader in methane emissions certification and transparent methane emissions intensity data, has unveiled a pioneering Supply Chain Protocol at CERAWeek 2024. This framework aims to equip buyers, importers and end-users with in-depth methane emissions intensity data for the entire natural gas supply chain. By providing detailed information on well-to-gate emissions, stakeholders can make more informed decisions to reduce the impact of methane emissions on the environment immediately.

The natural gas market is in urgent need of enhanced transparency on methane intensity data to meet environmental targets, comply with regulations, and gain access to financial markets. MiQ acknowledges the importance of this information for various stakeholders, including regulators, utilities, industry consumers dependent on LNG imports, importing nations, and hydrogen and ammonia producers using natural gas as feedstock.

"If we are serious about achieving the Global Methane Pledge's goal of a 30% reduction in methane emissions by 2030, MiQ's Supply Chain Protocol enables stakeholders to choose the most reliable emissions data, construct comprehensive supply chain profiles and purchase lower-emission gas with confidence, while ensuring data comparability throughout the process," said Georges Tijbosch, CEO of MiQ.

While international programs, such as The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s MMRV Framework, EU methane import strategy and the Japanese and Korean CLEAN initiative, strive to mandate emissions comparisons for imports from well-to-gate, full implementation is still several years away. Despite the presence of voluntary programs and methodologies, such as OGMP 2.0, GTI Veritas, International Energy Agency (IEA) methane tracker, and MiQ's own Methane Performance Standard, aimed at assessing methane loss across various areas, countries, or a company's operational footprint, the establishment of credible and transparent emissions at the supply chain level remains fragmented, incomplete and slow to advance.

To meet this urgency, MiQ has developed a pioneering Supply Chain Protocol based on recognized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles. The protocol strives to address the critical gap in a lack of measurement-informed, high-quality data by qualifying a variety of data sources required to create the entire gas supply chain. Critically, it accommodates multiple data sources–certified and uncertified data–and provides a ranking of the quality of each methodology. Furthermore, MiQ's Supply Chain Protocol allows for the integration of new methodologies to keep pace with emerging techniques and advancements in methane science.

Collecting insights in the field and conducting in-depth analyses, including of trading patterns over the past two years, MiQ's Supply Chain Protocol creates an opportunity for timely emissions reduction by providing industry players with information needed now to make informed decisions, removing the need to wait for voluntary initiatives to grow adoption. This open-source framework is a solution that can help regulators measure emissions more quickly, with available data.    

Committed to advancing supply-chain analyses, MiQ delivers transparency through its extensive environmental standards and programs. The Supply Chain Protocol aligns with MiQ's mission to support the energy transition by bringing clarity to methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry. To explore MiQ's Supply Chain Protocol, visit www.MiQ.org.

About MiQ:

MiQ is an independent not-for-profit established to facilitate a rapid reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. MiQ is the fastest growing and globally recognized methane emissions certification standard. Certification allows global society to credibly differentiate gas based on its methane emissions performance, providing a market mechanism that incentivizes methane reduction. MiQ's vision is to create a market where certified natural gas can be traded like other historical commodities, ultimately creating incentives to drive down methane emissions across the entire industry.

About Independently Certified Gas:

Independently certified gas (ICG) is natural gas produced by companies whose operations are independently verified by third-party auditors. This clear, neutral assessment of natural gas provides operators with the information they need to drive down methane emissions. The MiQ standard is enabling the growth of an ICG market to accelerate the reduction of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.

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SOURCE MiQ