Reducing Emissions in the Natural Gas Supply Chain
hello everyone uh welcome to csis my name is Joseph Mike and I’m the director of our energy security and climate change program for those of you in the room this is a very safe facility if we have any issues please follow the instructions of a csis staff member the exit doors are obvious and well lit as well for those of you joining us online we’re so grateful that you’re here either live or watching a recording of the programming today because we’re going to have a really interesting conversation and two years ago the Secretary of Energy commissioned the NPC to study the methane emissions associated with oil and gas production in the United States and after a long and intensive process what my colleague Ben kahel has been a part of that so I’ve seen from the side just how thorough these studies and the research that underlies them are uh we have a report it was released uh just last week and this is the first time for us here at csis and for our audience here in Washington to hear of not just about the report and its outcomes but the the implications of the findings in this report as we look forward of course this is a very important issue for the United States as we look at a uh the oil and gas industry being a significant part of our economy a significant part now of our geopolitical footprint and what I think is the Real Alignment between the imperative to do things about greenhouse gas and greenhouse gases and warming emissions and the the Strategic objectives of having the US uh be a clean and responsible energy exporter and guaran of energy security around the world I think that’s what this conversation and the conversations that will follow allow us to probe with no further Ado please let me introduce my colleague senior fellow in our program Ben Cahill and he will introduce the panel and moderate today’s discussion for those in the room I believe there will be a question period at the end of the session thank you so much for joining and thank you online for joining us as well over to Ben all right thanks a lot Joseph and yeah that’s excellent context for the study and for today’s conversation about the greenhouse gas emissions intensity uh of us fossil fuels um so I’m really pleased to be able to discuss this with this group um it couldn’t be more timely and I think it’s a really important topic um sometimes when you launch a major study like this things change and Things fall out of the news they become less timely this topic that was addressed in the study is really critical for the country maybe even more so today than it was 2 years ago when the study was first launched so we’re really privileged to be able to host this discussion today I’m just going to quickly introduce the speakers um their bios are on the website you’re probably familiar with many of them uh but on my left to your right we have Ryan P he is Deputy assistant secretary in the office of resource sustainability that’s within the office of fossil energy and carbon management at due he was an integral person government co-chair I believe in the National Petroleum Council study we have John darar who’s management director for low carbon Technologies at conica Phillips also a really critical person throughout the entire study process we have Courtney hadrick to my right who is operating director of the Southern you Indian tribe growth fund and uh I’m really excited to have you explain what that is why it’s significant in your experience and why it’s relevant to this particular study in the topic and we have Kevin book who’s managing director at quer viiew Energy Partners and is one of our program AFF um at csis so the way this is going to work is that um John is briefly going to introduce a couple highlights of the NPC study really just summarize what the study was about a little bit about the NPC and and how this process took place and then we’ll have opening comments from um actually we’ll start with Ryan then we’ll have JD present a little bit about the study and then Courtney and Kevin after that I think we’ll have plenty of time for discussion and we’ll have time for audience Q&A at the end so Ryan over to you maybe for some opening comments great thank you and thank you to csis for uh for hosting us thank thanks Joseph and and Ben uh so the National Petroleum council is a federal advisory uh committee to the Department of energy and to our secretary uh it consists of a diverse group and so it’s not just oil and gas companies but it’s it’s academics it’s NGS environmentalists um so it’s really a diverse perspective uh on these energy issues um and so we’re able to bring that whole group together to work on these studies uh for the secretary uh in the department uh and I’m just really appreciative of the work that all of uh these members did uh on this study uh and John dear’s leadership of of pulling this together um greenhouse gas emissions in the natural gas supply chain is extremely important to everything that we are focused on in my office uh on reducing methane emissions intensity on ensuring that natural gas uh plays such an important role to our Energy Mix and our security and ensuring that it’s uh as maximally abated and and low admitting as possible um so this this was a important request two years ago uh when the secretary asked for it uh and it’s still very important uh right now this really is a a major topic for us at the department uh and across government so just want to say thank you for all your work and look forward to the discussion today thanks thanks fan and John do you want to briefly present some highlights of the study well thank you Ben and and Ryan and thanks to CIS csis for hosting us today uh and particularly you know thanks to Ben you really rolled up your sleeve and help us get this study done so there a very very small role yeah but small But Mighty um so uh for those of you that uh took uh AP Chemistry in high school you’ll recognize that charting the course as cleverly has CH4 that’s methane and CO2 which is carbon dioxide and a big old thanks to uh uh a brilliant consultant and graphic artist Kevin book for coming up with that piece of artwork um but we we wanted to to mention that because it really becomes the core part of what we studied was methane and CO2 the word and is very important I’ll be repeating that later on uh reducing ghg emissions uh we were tasked by the secretary to figure out how could the natural gas supply chain help the national goals the announced goals of this the administration on reducing ghg emissions and the global methane pledge uh we talk about the US natural gas supply chain and let me parse that briefly focus on us produced gas this is National Petroleum council is a federal advisory committee we looked at us produced gas it is natural gas whether it’s gas that comes along with oil or gas that is produced as dry gas um but it’s not gas that’s produced from other sources than uh than oil and gas drilling um the supply chain means getting it from the well head to the end user’s meter so it doesn’t include uh the socalled PO um end use combustion of natural gas uh that was uh the way we designed the scope of the study that was out of scope of the work that we were doing so I’m going to now go into a bit more detail on what we did in the study and and what we found aiming it at the system and back can we advance the slides yeah I can see the laptop is working okay but not the projection bear with us for just a second we get the slides up so one of the key findings that we had in the report is that at current production rates there is enough natural gas reserve in the US for 100 years of production um the source for that if you read in the study was the um uh gas committee at Colorado School of Mines was our our primary source on that uh the second finding we have is that natural gas is both the primary source of energy in the US that’s Heat and power it’s also the primary source of energy for electricity in the US U but emitting producing and delivering natural gas to end users emits greenhouse gases uh 33% of the methane emitted by anthropogenic sources in the US comes from the natural gas supply chain uh the other big areas are agriculture uh at 38% and also landfills and waste and coal mines we focus in this study on the greenhouse gas emissions from the natural gas supply chain including the methane from the natural gas supply chain two years ago we received the study request letter from the Secretary of Energy which uh put six challenges and six six basic questions in front of us um my responsibility was collecting a team of experts that could take the six questions and come up with cogent findings and recommendations and our deliverable as the National Petroleum Council are those findings and recommendations uh although the primary audience is the Secretary of Energy we are allowed as the federal advisory committee to make recommendations for any branch uh of the federal government state government and recommendations for private sector actions and and that’s an important point we do have a lot of findings in the report on recommended private sector action so we got the task letter we organized the team the team had about 220 participants uh including 14 phds in methane science uh that the team collectively published over 220 peer-reviewed technical papers on ghg emissions during the course of the study so we had a tremendous depth of knowledge and talent um in fact the things were coming out so fast that literally last weekend I was reading a prepub from one of our team members on on some something coming out new uh but of those 220 members and they were drawn from the members of the federal advisory committee ah there we go there we go about half of them were from the O oil and gas sector about half were not from think tanks like csis academics non-governmental organizations financial and Consulting Services state government Representatives others including tribal entities so we really strove to have a diverse package of views uh I’m also happy to say that we were able to reach consensus on all of our findings and recommendations but the the challenge I gave to the group early on is we don’t want findings and recommendations that are easy to agree on we want ones that make everybody just a little uncomfortable because that way we know that we’re pushing the envelope in our recommendations for things that will actually help deliver on the request that came from the secretary so what did we get two years we’ve got 38 recommendations in the executive summary we have many many more recommendations in the body of the study and sort of really detailed action recommendations uh we broke it up into five task groups that was really more of an administrative process of the major subjects one thing that was important in this study um was we emphasized the societal considerations and and impacts of actions to be to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions this was a specific request by the secretary but we very quickly figured out we needed to include it throughout the study it’s not just a bolt-on section at the back oh by the way societal concerns it’s actually threaded through all of our chapters in the study and all of our recommendations um we also collaborated with the parallel NPC hydrogen study run by my colleague Austin Knight at Chevron uh on uh alignment on Sci and Community engagement so we have five elements in our overall theme the recommendation package um they’re in a circle because there’s not one of them that’s more important than the others and they’re all interconnected they’re all delivered at the same time um we do break them out temporally to show what things can be done now what foundation work needs to be done and then what going to be done in the long term but I I’ll just sort of briefly point out we do work did a lot of work on the science of measurement and quantification primarily of methane emissions um we had a a really good team of academics that worked on that practicing experts in Industry we interviewed literally dozens of equipment manufacturers we did a workshop at the meek lab doe Mech laboratory with field testing and demonstrations so we got a lot of input and we identified that it’s really really interesting science and that there’s more work to be done particularly around the quantification effort uh I mentioned societ societal impacts uh Community engagement um as an innovation in this study we actually did live focus groups around the country and polling activity to get real data that we could present to doe to validate our findings so we think that our findings and recommendations about ways to engage with the community have been field tested and and validated um when we we talk about um work on abatement so one of the really key areas is about incentives um and anybody that’s uh that’s worked on any sort of regulatory process knows that when there’s an incentive for somebody to comply they’re more likely um to to want to do it uh and so that’s a big part of what we talked about was the incentives uh we don’t up with one final recommendation but rather a a matrix of various kinds of incentives and the pros and cons of each so that policy makers can start to have a serious debate around if I want this incentive what are the pros and cons uh we talk about regulatory Effectiveness and durable policy uh we have a a pretty lengthy piece of analysis on what makes a policy durable um and uh how to be effective and we make some recommendations about uh the the federal government uh harmonizing across various agencies uh for example on the use of Technology where technology doesn’t care who who the regulator is it’s applicable for for methane pretty much every place and I mentioned industry and operator actions we found that um there were some real pockets of excellence and so getting those pockets of Excellence more broadly spread across industry is a really important uh recommendation it’s an action for the industry with support from the government so if you forget everything else I tell you today remember this um we see that uh natural gas H has a crucial role in energy security we did a deep dive uh in the study on how natural gas fits in both domestically and from an LG export standpoint uh and to a lesser extent for North American Gas uh exports but to show how important uh natural gas is in energy security and how it can play a role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions um we also point out that this goes beyond 2050 under any eia scenario a big part of our work was to separate um What scenario what Supply demand balance you needed it doesn’t matter the way we make our recommendations they are Source specific and therefore they are uh neutral as to which Supply demand balance you would want to use so here’s the big takeaway our most forward-leaning reduction pathway we call it the Technology Innovation and policy pathway uh 70% reduction in methane 33% reduction in uh CO2 emissions from the US natural gas supply chain by 2050 how to get there read the study thank you thanks Char that was terrific um you did a great job I think of talking about the context for the study and of course I think you mentioned the global methane PGE the international context is that everyone knows that reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is one of the biggest levers that we have to change the pace of global warming in the near term but that’s a really complex thing to do and I think you’ve touched on some of the challenges that the industry faces you’ve got large and small actors you got some who’ve been very active in detection and quantification for years a number of smaller companies are dealing with cost challenges they’re confused by the technology so grappling with all those different actors and making recommendations that are targeted towards each of them is really important and I think that’s part of what the study did um so lots of threats to pull on we’re going to come back to both of you to talk about these things but Courtney over to you for some opening comments great thank you um So Courtney hadrick I work for the southern Ute uh Indian tribe growth fund and I wanted to spend a few minutes just thank you Ben for having the opportunity to be here today and thank you to csis for um letting the voice of the tribe kind of be heard in the context of energy I also want to thank the folks that are on the panel and the NPC and the department of energy for letting us be part of the study we were one of the 200 folks that were participants in the study and um we got as much out of the study and hopefully we were able to make a few contributions in positive direction this is the first time that seci or societal considerations and impacts was a full chapter on the study so it was great to have that dialogue and conversation throughout the entire study uh I want to give a little background of the Southern youths many of you may or may not know about them and I’ll spend a little bit of time in my opening on that uh the southern UTS are a federally recognized tribe they’re located in Southwest Colorado their um history began well before the United States even became a country they’re the longest continuous inhabitants in the state of Colorado and their reservation story really begins in 1868 when they signed a treaty and they um were kind of on about the Western third of the uh of the state of Colorado today their reservation is about 680,000 acres and it’s what we call a checkerboarded reservation uh less than 50% of those lands are held in travel trust the remainder are fee simple there’s uh Forest Service lands as well as the state so it’s a very diverse reservation that’s um got a very complex surface ownership and then a severed mineral estate the trib’s history with oil and gas Leasing and energy dates back to the 1950s when many of their properties were were leased um the tribe was not as actively involved in those activities as they are today uh today um the tribe operates very successful businesses through the growth fund and I’ll talk a little bit about how the growth fund uh came to be in the 1990s the tribe did not have the financial resources that they have today and the fruit formation or CED methane development occurred on the reservation on those properties that released back in the ‘ 50s the tribe took their passive royalties and their Visionary leadership at the time chared their course for sovereignty and self-determination they took their passive royalties exercised Financial discipline made some sacrifices of their elders and put a plan together where they would separate their government from their businesses and they executed on that plan today they operate schools rec center Muse Museum all of their members have the opportunity to go to college uh they provide Health Care uh stable retirement benefits and they focus collectively on the whole of their community so it is a real great honor um to work for them and I think that uh energy was a big part in helping them achieve their success and they’re not done yet uh they’re continuing to diversify their portfolio and have business Investments through the growth fund which is their business arm in about 16 States as well as the um deep water Gulf of Mexico so it was a real honor and privilege to be part of the study and lend a slightly different perspective than what you might traditionally see in a study of that nature and to spend time talking about um societal considerations and impacts when you have energy development in your backyard and your approach changes a little bit when it’s your backyard versus uh somebody else’s and so I look forward to being part of the panel today and hopefully it can answer any questions around tribal energy development greenhouse gas emission reduction and then just SCI as a whole so thank you yeah thanks so much Courtney that’s fascinating stuff and there’s definitely a lot to talk about in terms of tribal Community engagement the particular challenges that that poses and how to do it right maybe how those communities differ from some of the others that the report considers so we’ll definitely come back to that Kevin over to you I think part of your role here is to talk about how the study ties in with what federal agencies might do next and some of the recommendations towards them how it is relevant to different actors across the government so please take it away thanks Ben uh thanks Joseph uh Folks at csis I’ve been an affiliate at csis and a member of the NPC for about the same amount of time which is more than a decade and so I might come off a little biased uh but what I’m about to say is you should read this study before I answer what I was asked to talk about when I was a baby analyst uh I used NPC studies to learn a lot really quickly they’re an incredible resource they’re dense they’re long they’re full of numbers and words uh but if you’re actually interested in the question of what industry can do what policy can do to change the shape of the curve to bend the short-term radi of forcing effects that come from methane in the atmosphere that are so much the focus of both policy and popular discussion right now this report will go through them and go through what it means here in the US LG happened to be the MVP of the energy War Phase of global conflict we saw uh in 2022 and yet it came at a time that April 22nd letter from the secretary came at a time when here in the United States a number of regulatory actions were contemplated or underway those have involved among other things new source performance standards for existing uh for for new wells and for existing Wells following those standards uh for the well and gas sector for methane uh they also involved yet another version of the waste prevention rule the interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to curtail methane Emissions on federal lands and Indian lands uh and uh they coincided with the creation of the first price on greenhouse gases First Federal price on greenhouse gases that was put into law as part of the inflation reduction act section 136 C of the Clean Air Act for those keeping score at home uh colloquially known as the methane fee uh and so questions about measurement and monitoring and reporting and verification are front and center we’re actually essentially at a point in history where I think we’re we’re becoming a measurement informed border adjusted world uh emissions profiles within and across borders are increasingly important and the regulatory structure here in the US is going to be asking questions of industry and of the NBC and of all sources uh to try to gain an understanding of whether we have vulnerabilities we need to shore up uh domestically glob for trade purposes and also advantages that we can seize upon uh and I think that among the other things that are going on in tanding with the study although the doe is is is a convening player and hasn’t taken full credit for it there’s a very important effort to try to synchronize mmrv uh measurement monitoring reporting verification in an international working group context so that we can agree on what numbers we’re talking about how those numbers are gauged this report this study goes into some of those essential questions of quantification and measurement I know we’ll talk about that too uh so in essence when you when you look at the five areas that the JD listed he described them blandly as administrative categories I would call them a full curriculum for those who are interested in understanding the mean moment excellent yeah I totally agree on the importance of figuring out how to incorporate all this measurement data that we’re getting from satellites and drones and aerial surveillance it’s great to have companies out there doing doing these things and exploring with new technologies it is really really hard to take that and build up an inventory of greenhouse gases that improves upon the way that we’ve done it historically which is these engineering based estimates but also helps iterate on it improve that knowledge incorporate all this data as it becomes um more available and as it improves over time and that is a really really big task it’s very complex and so there’s a whole section of the report that is is devoted to that and as you mentioned Kevin it’s really important to the mmrv effort that the do is involved in to lots of federal Ru making and to what other countries are doing to to try to understand the methane problem great so thanks so much to everyone for the opening comments um maybe Ryan I’ll just kick it back to you for the first question just talk to us about how these studies unfold in the due so why did the secretary choose this particular topic about greenhouse gas emissions intensity of of us gas um talk about the level of involvement that the due had throughout the process and then I want to ask a follow-up question on what we do with all the findings and recommendations but just provide some context on doe engagement throughout this study yeah sure thank you uh so this kind of th this starts with the secretary uh reaching out either verbally or in writing to the to the federal advisory committee and saying I’d like you to start thinking of of what some possible topics are and then while the federal advisory committee starts to do that then she asks us as as the staff at doe what do we think are some important things and we look at the different priorities that uh that the Administration has um and what we think are important for for our program or things that we think we need guidance on uh and we’d like to hear from external uh viewpoints of those and you know methane emissions uh and natural gas was right at the top right um so while a lot of the department is focused on a lot of you know big research on our clean energy uh Pathways our office in fossil energy and carbon management is really focused on ensuring that uh we have the supplies that we need uh as a nation and the right policy in place as a nation for uh for our major current uh traditional energy and when we look at where we can uh help make our clean energy goals in that area methane of course was the obvious uh was the obvious choice um and the feedback that we got from the advisory committee was exactly the same they thought that was an important topic so we really came together from from both the department and an advisory committee on on thinking this was an important topic that we wanted uh to pursue and so the secretary uh then drafted a a letter instructing the advisory committee that they would uh at requesting them to take up this as a as a study topic and then the committee comes together and and considers That official letter and then votes to say yes we should we should pursue this uh they then pull together you know I said there was these 200 members on this committee well that’s a lot to kind of bring to consensus on something two 200 CEO uh level people um so they they have a smaller group that they put together as a study committee that really digs into how they want to steer and approach this and from there they form a working group uh and select individuals to kind of lead that working group and that’s how John is then tasked with uh with leading that that process and really taking over leading this study uh it’s important to say that that this is this is a federal advisory committee study so although doe serves as a resource to to John and his team as they they go about uh working on this over two years you know we’re we’re intentionally staying away from from the input or guidance right we want to uh receive this and and know that this is really coming from the members and so we make ourselves available throughout the process uh to help dig up resources if there’s Clarity that’s needed from the secretary’s letter we can help provide that um but you know we are really there to to ensure that uh you know that that they’re staying on track and keeping up uh keeping us a breast of kind of progress uh but completely staying away from from their ability to uh to provide us advice uh but John pulls together a strong a strong group uh with different companies and then uh throughout the two-year process there’s uh there’s a lot of meetings and discussions and then finally it gets to a point where it’s ready to uh go through a series of reviews and then ultimately it is uh voted on by the members uh and presented to the secretary yeah so John’s already mentioned that throughout these really extensive chapters on different topics that are part of the study there’s a series of findings and recommendations I think you said there are 38 in the executive summary right but each chapter has got these they’re quite detailed John as you mentioned some of these are targeted towards the department of energy some of them are about oil and gas companies and the industry r large um where do we go from here in terms of how these recommendations land with the Department of energy other federal agencies I wonder if anyone would like to jump in and talk about how past NPC Studies have influenced policy influen what the department of energy has done and the reason I ask is we know that this is a critical issue and that time is of the essence for getting our arms around greenhouse gas emissions intensity so what can you tell us about how these findings and recommendations can actually spur action and and you know real policy improvements in the near term maybe John start with you so um very early on uh I and Ryan figured out that we needed to have a Communications plan that we shouldn’t just deliver a 700 page door stop and hope people would read it an act uh so we collaborate and put together a list of uh federal agencies um Committees of jurisdiction State Reg ators and other uh bodies that have influence in uh oil and gas policy and and in greenhouse gas policy and said we need to get out there and get our message out there and so we we already have that in place we’ve started it literally the afternoon it was approved started rolling out the study and having uh individual meetings with groups um like yourselves to say here’s what’s in the study and by the way under your jurisdiction or your Authority these are the areas of the study that are you should be reading and taking action on this is what it means and this is what a good outcome would look like so that’s a big part of what we’re doing um in parallel um we’re letting the industry because there’s a lot of Industry recommendations um take their action items and so we’re also doing a briefing program for industry members in all the different sectors the small producers large producers the pipeline folks the LNG folks um um to say here are recommendations that you need to pay attention to and that we are recommending you take action on and um either individually or collectively so that’s how we’re sort of actioning everything that’s in the study yeah okay um Courtney let me let me turn to you so there’s a lot of interest groups that the study addresses and covers one of them is um it’s about Community engagement with all kinds of different stakeholders with an interest in oil and gas issues including tribal groups that produce energy some of these recommendations are relevant for big major oil and gas companies like Exon Mobile and Chevron but I wonder if you could talk about how this report can be useful to tribal energy groups across the country what are the some of the recommendations about engaging with those types of organizations to share lessons learned from this kind of study to provide them access to information and data Where Do We Go From Here in terms of engaging with the community like the southern UDS yeah great question um so you know twofold on on engagement with tribal energy with respect to the Rapport uh by participation in the process um and when you look at some of the recommendations and the findings they really do hit home for us and some of the things that we’re doing within our tribal Community is we have a lot of marginal Wells on the reservation and we have a lot of uh less capitalized operators and we’re holding a stakeholder engagement meeting with the folks in our community that operate on the reservation through the tribes Department of energy to start talking about the technology and the findings in the report and how we can apply that technology and work together to lower our overall methane emissions and so our team participated at the meek event and was able to learn quite a bit through the process and we’re able to take what we’ve been learning for the last two years and is summarized in the findings and recommendations of the report and work with operators to try to implement change on the reservation our goal is to get to be one of the lowest carbon intensity um mcfs or m& BTUs of gas that’s produced um the tribe shares that that same alignment around carbon neutrality and getting there and um cleaning up emissions of all the wells in the US is really important to do that not just new development but Legacy development as well yeah and maybe I can stick with you and ask our question about Community engagement with with tribes um you know this study and the hydrogen study that the NPC did in parallel were kind of unique and making this a really big priority but can you just talk about some of the differences between tribal Community engagement on issues related to oil and gas extraction what makes them different are the Southern UDS different from many other tribes across the United States and across North America in this respect I mean what did you want to get across as part of the study and what have you taken away from it sure um so Community engagement in general and and tribal Community engagement um they’re different but they’re one and the same because they’re about the people that are living with the impacts associated with the development in the in the tribal sense um I worked not for the southern UTS 13 years ago I worked for another party uh prior to that and my view back then on how to engage with a community is very different than the view that I have today uh I used to think about in community engagement around if we have a project that we want to work on and develop how do we engage the community properly and how do we build consensus so that we can kind of move forward and do it in the right way in working for the tribe one of the things that I learned is that um the first question the tribal council will ask me is how does this benefit the membership and if you think about applying the community engagement model in the NPC study and you focus it more on the community and how it does benefit that community and it’s not always a financial benefit sometimes when you’re in rural parts of the country there’s other things that matter to folks there that’s not just a a financial impact but if you have resources um in construction or other other aspects of development you can bring those resources and try to provide some benefit to those communities so for me my mental model really had to shift where it was um how do we benefit the membership or how does this benefit the membership and we still need a successful project at the same um time and so it’s a little bit different model and then the second thing is when you think about energy development it goes through a full life cycle and early on you have a lot of capital and a lot of times there’s big operators there and then eventually you get to less capitalized operators and I think when you start to think about engagement of the community is it’s not just what’s best for the Meers membership or the community but it’s what do you do over the life cycle of that development and you have to think holistically about the beginning as well as the end and the tribe is really great at thinking in generations and not quarters and so I think that mental model and those shifts um if industry and Society in general can shift that a little bit um I think we’ll be better in the long run in achieving goals that matter most for the communities where we’re operating in excent yeah please so one of our one of my personal learnings uh during the course of the study is that um Community engagement has a there’s a model for it but what a community wants is very much place-based and it’s based on the history of that Community which took place long before you showed up to do your oil and gas project and only by listening and learning to what is important to the community what their past history is what their concerns are can you actually address and collaborate those concerns so the very much our process recommendation is around listening and learning first Y and if I might add you did ask about the southern Ute tribe versus other tribes and my personal experience has been when you know One Tribe you know One Tribe and what matters to One Tribe may not be important to another and to JD’s point it’s really important to meet the community whether it’s a tribal Community or another Community where that Community is and find out what’s important and listen to them um and it is an iterative process so I just want to make that clear that um when you know One Tribe you know One Tribe and you can’t assume that since it worked for one it works for others yeah thank you that’s a really important Point um okay well what’s talk about some of the data and findings in the report um anyone who’s looked in even a cursory way at the US oil and gas system uh and Emissions intensity knows that it’s hard to generalize right emissions occur in very different ways in different producing basins occurs during production Midstream Transportation Gathering and boosting lufa many other places um and of course the scope of the study as you mentioned included both methane and CO2 um there was a a really detailed look at supply chain emissions right across the entire supply chain including emissions associated with specific Transportation routes so JD maybe you can just give us a sense of what was the most surprising finding maybe of about CO2 versus methane intensity in different producing areas and Midstream transportation areas and Kevin maybe have thoughts on that as well um you know there are a growing number of studies to look at the emissions intensity of Perman Basin production or appalachin Basin production you know there’s huge variation I think between different bits of INF infrastructure and operators but you know what did the study uncover in that regard so one of the biggest aha moments for me is was as we started to parse out where in the supply chain do you get methane emissions and where you get Co2 emissions and that there’s not very much overlap which meant we could make recommendations to reduce methane and CO2 and there was very little place where we had to talk about a tradeoff between one or the other um almost almost none and so that really made it uh a great way for us to describe what those recommendations are at the source level um the other and I’m going to ask Kevin to talk a little bit more about this was our learnings around measurement informed greenhouse gas inventories so one of the things that is uh I think obvious is that it’s hard to count every molecule in the world and at some point those who run statistical agencies I see one in the audience uh know that you have to come up with proxies uh the practice of assigning coefficients or default values and multiplying by that default value creates a lot of skew with that variability that JD just described between basins and that Ben mentioned uh the intensity that you have at different parts of the value chain means that you can’t necessarily assume that a given volume of gas produces the same amount of greenhouse gas signature uh when it passes through a different part of the country or a different part of the value chain uh so you probably are going to want to measure sounds simple uh why not just count uh how from the sky from ground from drones or planes flying over at what time of day uh when when are leaks occurring are they occurring continuously intermittently uh and it turns out that it’s not trivial in fact it’s not only not trivial it’s incredibly complex uh the practice of figuring out how to measure and and to capture all this is in evolving science that the industry has been working on really intensively and with great gains over decades and they’re getting a lot closer uh and I think one of the points of the study one of the key things that you can get from that is that understanding that if you look at the the numbers as they are you’re going to get different results now there’s a lot of folks who will say well look at all the things you haven’t counted but the other side of that is look at all the improvements that don’t fit into a generalized proxy number so when you go to actually measurement informed based judgments uh and and not just proxy numbers you get very different results uh sometimes those results point to areas for immediate attention sometimes those results uh point to demonstrable gains that I think you can you can look to as a success ESS yeah definitely and I I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to the work that Doe has done um there’s a we also learned that there’s a lot of the methane detection technology that’s uh in deployment right now that was originated in the National Laboratories complex so uh you know that’s a source of innovation it’s then industry’s responsibility to deploy that Innovation yeah definitely I mean I think the doe has played such a critical role in funding early stage pilot testing of new detection Technologies and of course a critical aspect of where we go from here is how to integrate all this measurement data and build new types of inventories to integrate all this measurement data as it becomes available and make it available at different types of spatial and temporal resolution which as you said is a big deal Kevin that’s tough to do um one of the chapters of the study looked at life cycle greenhouse gas emissions intensity that was the chapter that I was involved in where I was completely outclassed by a bunch of PhD scientists who are life cycle assessment experts anyone who’s looked at LCA studies knows they are incredibly complicated they can tell you a lot but there are many many many inputs uh they’re not necessarily user friendly and that’s a challenge right because this is an issue of public interest so John can you talk about the the model that was developed on LCA as part of the study how it’s different and how it’s going to be valuable to a broader public so we developed a model for for doing life cycle assessments which we’re putting into the public domain as part of the study uh so there for people to use but one two important Innovations in that one is through a process of harmonization and evaluating with other study experts we determine that um to do historically to do a really accurate life cycle assessment took up to 150 variables that all had to be accurately characterized but the LCA experts figure out that we can get a really good LCA answer and the answer is what is the carbon intensity of natural gas from the well head to the delivery meter with only 22 variables can give a really accurate life cycle assessment the other Innovation that we put into this model is that it doesn’t just draw from uh National averages or some historical database of emissions it allows the user to take their measurement informed inventories and put it into the model to calculate their carbon intensity of their gas so those are the two big Innovations and again we’re uh we’re making that model publicly available it’s available on the NPC website uh along with the user manual um and th that’s really the big value that we got out of it yeah definitely yeah that’s a really important tool um I’m going to open it up for audience questions in just a minute but Kevin let me turn to you as a non-government person on the stage who’s maybe free to speak a little bit more uh open to speak more freely on this there’s a big policy debate going on now about uslg exports you may have heard there’s a pause there’s a lot of concern about the ghd emissions intensity of uslg what we know what we don’t know how it Compares with other countries around the world how does this study and the the Deep dive on ghd intensity of us gas supply chains address some of those questions well so um the pause can be framed a lot of ways I think there are some who would say that there’s a political element to it I know perish the thought but underlying that there are also genuine concerns and interests and these have a lot to do with questions of trust and data quality and data integrity and in the world we find ourselves there are questions about whether a gas resource that comes from the United States liquefied at the coast Travels by ship and delivered to a foreign country displacing coal will actually be cleaner than the cold burned in power plants in that country this life cycle analysis question is a non-trivial question what the study does is it opens up the the parts of that in a very accessible way so you can understand what this debate is really about where the variables lie where the the components are it doesn’t get into what happens on the on the other coasts there’s a lot of questions that are too hard to generalize or even understand uh from from our Shores after all but it gets to the essential question about whether gas is part of a solution in a climate change mitigation context whether gas is a problem some alleged and the answers are sometimes yes to both uh sometimes no to both and uh figuring out how to tell the difference is really important uh we are again I I used the words measurement informed and Border adjusted earlier uh as it stands right now the European Union is not explicitly regulating the greenhouse gas intensity of petroleum or natural gas gas coming into its Shores after all that’d be kind of tough to do right now when you’re sort of short petroleum and natural gas but it’s coming uh they haven’t said exactly that there is a methane regulation though that does say that it’s looking at intensity calculation similar to the methane intensity calculations in the US methane fee uh and so the world is going to be counting and understanding how to count and and and wide account uh but also the the complexity and differences involved is deep discussion and I think what the study does is it gives a really good portal into understanding that the the idea that you can you can model your own LCA and get a reasonable understanding of comparative uh performance from different sources in different National or Regional Origins extremely important yeah nicely stated and the boundary of the study is US Shores right so it doesn’t cover the shipping sector doesn’t cover combustion so it’s not the downstream use of natural gas but I think the recommendations and the findings are really about what the United States and producers here and communities can do to drive down emissions from all these phases that are within our control um and I have a paper coming on EU methane legislation and why it’s important for LG exporters so stay tuned for that I totally agree that countries around the world are starting to look at this more intently mostly in Europe but increasingly in Northeast Asia and it’s going to be a thing um okay questions from the audience does anyone here have a question I think we have a microphone uh maybe in the front here if you could just briefly introduce yourself and keep the question brief as well uh thank you Doug hangle with LNG allies one of the recommendations on this nice sheet here is um leveraging this study for development of a common mmrv Global framework which is what doe has been trying to do is your is that recommendation consistent with that does it go beyond it how would you describe that so I don’t think it goes beyond what doe is doing but it’s supportive of what doe is doing um you know the elements of a framework um that are in the study are mmrv and the verification of the measurements um how to improve the measurement informed inventories uh sort of a bottom up top down correlation um we did the demonstration in the U model a blca model of running a sensitivity on if we take some peer-reviewed studies on top down measurements and we put those into the model does that give us a a reasonable outcome and we verify that yes it does uh actually allow someone to put their their real world data in there so those are maybe some of the the key aspects I guess I’ll yeah I’ll I’ll add uh you know we’ve been doing work at doe on this this mmrv effort and and meeting with a lot of the exporting and importing countries and hearing what they’re their needs and requirements are um you know one of the values of the NPC doing a study is to hear uh to hear their input um and so to hear from from industry and others uh that think this is valuable that’s helpful if they had come out with a recommendation that said this wasn’t a useful exercise that’d be valuable input too so so for us um and for my team I think it’s it’s helpful to know that uh that we’re headed down a track that people find useful and valuable yeah and from my perspective the mmrv framework is all about tackling the complexity of tracking and reducing emissions right across natural gas supply chains and a lot of the detailed recommendations as part of the study really fit nicely into what the doe is trying to do in all those segments within us Shores to get a better handle on the emissions in intensity it doesn’t provide the full picture but if we compare that up with shipping sector emissions and emissions from other links across the value chain that is uh providing the full picture that countries want and a clear way to compare the emissions intensity of different volumes of of LG different volumes discrete volumes of pipeline gas as well joh and and one build on that it’s not a recommendation for doe but there’s a recommendation on um diplomatic efforts by the US to incorporate what we do here uh on the export of LG y other questions I’m uh Peter Humphrey I’m an intelligence analyst and a former Diplomat does does your study assume that at no point United States energy firms will be pursuing methane clathrates methane I’m sorry can you repeat clathrates clathrates meth hydrates methan hydrates well it’s a that’s a really interesting question because we uh did not explicitly study the emissions uh footprint from methane hydrates but we did have a field trip to go me uh meet um to the North Slope of Alaska to visit the doe uh pilot plant um would have been the western edge of the pruto bay field um and I think we have a topic paper on the subject of methane hydrates but we didn’t do a deep dive into the uh emissions footprint of methan hydrates okay other questions okay well we’ve just got a couple minutes I wonder if we could just do a quick round of closing thoughts anything we neglected to mention Kevin maybe we can start sure at this end uh well I want to just uh for those you heard about the process but I don’t think you can appreciate the scale of hundreds of people working for hundreds of days uh it’s a lot of it’s a lot of contribution but it’s also a lot of collaboration one of the areas where I think the NPC studies are unusual is that people from very different organizations and disciplines hash through difficult topics together um this sometimes builds friction and JD did an estimable job an amazing job coordinating and running the study uh dealing with some of the more friction intensive Parts but it also means that the conclusions have Buy in from everybody who is there uh and that’s really important these are not studies that just give out the voice of one side hey here’s what industry thought today no or here’s what the government thought today know there’s NOS in that mix that you saw on the slide uh and it’s important to understand that that the discussions that led to the consensus conclusions and recommendations were difficult discussions uh and uh I think that to the extent that this exercise is answering a question the secretary or six questions the secretary posed to the council uh it fulfills all that but to the extent that it does more than that and it sets up uh sustained cooperation and interfaces between different parties I think it’s an underappreciated asset of the process courney so I would just say that you know it’s been a real um privilege to be part of the the study group and to participate in it and it’s a very lengthy Report with a lot of great information but most importantly there’s great recommendations in the report I hope in a year or two or three that many of those recommendations are actually reality and they’re implemented cuz the task at hand while the technology case um shows tremendous reduction if we don’t Implement many of those recommendations we won’t achieve those goals and along the way there’s probably something else uh to learn so I think you know if folks have the opportunity to um help us implement the recommendations whether you are in the government you work in a Community you work in an environmental NGO you work for industry it’s going to take all of us Academia working together um to put those things into practice and lower our overall emissions profile excellent thanks John so we had a a lot of points of friction as Kevin pointed out uh we had some really useful discussions with uh the NGO community that when when neither we nor they were in front of a microphone or making public statements but really has ing it out as a small group um you know we sort of said well this is chadam house rules although at times it felt more like Roadhouse rules um and because of that we were we as industry were challenged to do things but also to come up with ways to say if we were to do that here is what’s keeping us from doing it uh and and then the recommendations could be formed that said here’s what we can do and here’s where we need help and I think that that was one of the most useful pieces that none of you will ever see it a few of you are in the room with me but you won’t see it but that’s what’s embedded in those recommendations is that kind of a trade-off yeah Ryan close the out please yeah so two things one is uh a little bit of an alibi on how do we actually use this so if you look at previous reports you can really see how programs have developed out of these recommendations and so this is something that you know we take very seriously and we use when we go and we decide what we’re going to focus on in a budget and we go present it on the hill and try to try to get by and we’re showing that this isn’t just something from a specific Administration that wants to do something but we’re hearing from an advisory committee that it’s important um so that’s that’s one point and and then the other is I just this has kind of already been said but uh I think it’s important to recognize uh not just the the effort that went into this but the the willing to tackle this issue and you know you often hear um you know in my office being the fossil Energy Office you you often hear maybe industry is not being supportive of different things and to to see this process go forward and have them really uh lean in with constructive uh recommendations you know it’s uh it releases a lot so I appreciate all the the effort that everyone did to to do that yeah excellent okay so the study is charting the course go to the NPC site Google it there’s something in there for everyone journalists academics uh students for your curriculum as Kevin mentioned to get smart on a lot of issues quickly uh a ton of people spent a lot of time on this and it’s really really substantive um John we’d love it if you read the whole report if you don’t have time the report summary Pages 15 through 20 and then the balance of that report summary you can do a deeper dive on subjects that you’re particularly interested in Pages 15 through 20 of the report summary excellent thank you very much so to everyone who’s with us today thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it I think we have a reception afterwards so hopefully you can stick around and to everyone joining us online thank you so much for joining as well I’m Ben kale signing off and thank you to our panelists and please uh join me and giving them a round of applause [Music]
CSIS is pleased to host a presentation and discussion on the National Petroleum Council’s new report, Charting the Course – Reducing GHG Emissions from the U.S. Natural Gas Supply Chain. More than 40 percent of the energy produced in the United States today is natural gas but producing and delivering natural gas also responsible for about 8 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions GHG). This new report shows the potential to eliminate more than half of the GHG emissions in the U.S. natural gas supply chain.
Featuring
Ryan Peay, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Resource Sustainability, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, U.S. Department of Energy
John Dabbar, Managing Director, Low Carbon Technologies, ConocoPhillips
Kevin Book, Managing Director, ClearView Energy Partners
Kourtney Hadrick, Operating Director, Southern Ute Indian Tribe Growth Fund
Opening remarks by Joseph Majkut, Director, CSIS Energy Security & Climate Change Program
Moderated by Ben Cahill, Senior Fellow, CSIS Energy Security & Climate Change Program
A reception with light refreshments will follow the event.
Read more and download the study: https://chartingthecourse.npc.org/
This event is made possible by general funding to CSIS and the CSIS Energy Security & Climate Change Program.
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