Direct measurements of methane emissions from key facilities in Alberta's oil and gas supply chain

Abstract

The Canadian government aims to achieve a 40–45 % reduction of oil and gas (O&G) methane (CH4) emissions by 2025, and 75 % by 2030, although recent studies consistently show that Canada's federal inventory underestimates emissions by a factor of 1.4 to 2.0. We conducted aerial mass balance measurements at sixteen upstream O&G facilities in Alberta between September 29 and November 6, 2021, and our measurements revealed that emissions were, on average, 1.7 (standard deviation (SD): 0.6) times higher than the reported emissions for the same year. On a subsequent campaign from August 12 to September 27, 2022, we focused on understudied O&G sectors covering 24 midstream and end-use facilities. These sites were found to be emitting, on average, 3.4 (SD: 1.1) times more CH4 than reported. By extrapolating our measurements to Alberta, we found that underground gas storage contributed to 1.6 % of provincial O&G emissions, followed by natural gas power stations/refineries less than 1.0 %. The widespread underreporting of CH4 emissions highlights the necessity for more empirical measurements of midstream and end-use facilities.