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Abstract The global Oil & Gas industry has been an active contributor to the development of sectoral guidance for accounting and reporting of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and has participated with multiple stakeholders in the developments of international and national GHG standards and protocols. With the emergence of emissions trading systems and new GHG reporting and disclosure schemes, attention is now being focused on the inherent uncertainty of the data used for emission estimates. For the Oil & Gas Industry, the accuracy of calculating GHG emissions is determined by the uncertainties of the estimates of the key (largest) contributing sources. Those, in turn, depend on the quality and availability of sufficient data, or on the ability to measure emissions, or related activity parameters, and properly account for their variability.
The Oil & Gas industry, through its global and regional associations, is pursuing these issues on many fronts, from global workshops, dialogue forums and other collaborative activities with peer associations and regulatory bodies. The goal of these activities is to gather information - and diverse perspectives - from all stakeholders. Issues that were discussed include cost-effective methods for quantifying uncertainty and data quality expectations (and level of significance sought) by regulators and by industry.
This paper discusses a range of activities undertaken by the industry to investigate key sources of uncertainty and address issues of lowering data uncertainty, including some joint efforts with other trade associations and with the U.S. EPA. It also provides highlights from the International Workshop on 'Addressing Uncertainty' (held in Brussels, January 2007), which resulted in a list of key issues that were prioritized for future collaboration.
Introduction The assessment of greenhouse gases GHG emissions and emission reductions are high on both political and scientific agendas in many countries. The global oil & natural gas (O&G) industry has been an active contributor to the development of sectoral guidance for accounting and reporting of GHG emissions, such as IPIECA (2003) Petroleum Industry Guidelines for Reporting GHG Emissions, and compiling emissions estimation methods, such as API (2004, 2005) Compendium of GHG Emissions Methodologies for the Oil and Gas Industry. This guidance has been recently augmented by API/IPIECA (2007) by its Guidelines to Account for Reductions Associated with Greenhouse Gas Projects. All these efforts were centered on common approaches that were adapted for use by the industry sector and are reflective of emission sources and emitted by O&G operations. Sector members have also participated with multiple stakeholders in the development of several international and national guidelines and reporting standards.
For an O&G company's GHG emission inventory, as is also the case in national GHG inventories, the overall uncertainty is determined by the uncertainties of the estimates of its key (largest) contributing sources. In turn, each of these uncertainties depends on the quality and availability of sufficient data to estimate emissions, or on our ability to measure emissions and properly account for their variability. With the emergence of emissions trading systems, and new reporting and disclosure schemes, data robustness is getting increased attention as a prerequisite for accurate determinations of GHG emissions and emission reductions.
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