BP responds to FT article on methane rules

BP has responded to the FT article “BP lobbied against US methane rules despite green public stance”.

• Natural gas has a critical role to play in helping the world transition to a low-carbon future, but it can only play its part if we control methane emissions.
• BP has long supported well-designed regulations that complement voluntary efforts by companies to address this challenge.
• We have consistently advocated for regulation of methane emissions by one federal agency – the Environmental Protection Agency—rather than an inefficient patchwork of different federal or state agencies.
• Thus, we suggested that the duplicative methane regulations by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management should be repealed and the EPA regulations should be kept in place but improved.
• We believe the EPA regulation should be flexible enough to allow for a range of technologies rather than rigidly bound to current tools that may become obsolete tomorrow.
• In short, BP supports the EPA directly regulating methane emissions through well-designed, cost-effective and technologically-flexible rules.
• But BP is not waiting for perfect regulations. We’re driving down methane emissions throughout our business.
• Last year BP announced an industry-leading methane intensity target of 0.2% -- a target praised by the Environmental Defense Fund and others for its stringency – and we are holding emissions to that goal.
• In our U.S. onshore operations, we have replaced around 99 percent of our high-bleed pneumatic controllers with continuous low-bleed and intermittent pneumatic controllers, and are deploying drones and other new remote leak-detection technologies.
• We’re also sharing lessons learned with industry and others through a series of methane roundtable events we’ve hosted in London, Washington, Beijing, and next month Brussels.
• BP is a founding member of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, which brings together 13 of the world’s largest energy companies and has set up a $1 billion investment fund to address methane emissions and other issues.
• BP is also a signatory member of the Methane Guiding Principles and within it we’re leading development of a plan to accelerate implementation of best practice guidelines across the natural gas value chain.
• BP will continue to advocate for well-designed, cost-effective federal methane regulations that can help us control emissions and advance a low-carbon future.