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The Methane Guiding Principles

Methane Guiding Principles

Our Five Principles

The Methane Guiding Principles focus on five priority areas for action to reduce methane emissions across the natural gas supply chain. They were developed collaboratively in 2017 by a coalition of industry and civil society organizations.

1. Continually Reduce Methane Emissions

We establish and maintain plans to systematically monitor and reduce methane emissions from identified sources in our existing operated assets, and we will prioritize higher emitting operations. We incorporate the management of methane emissions in maintenance plans and the design and construction of our new projects. We encourage these actions in non-operated assets.

We will reduce venting and fugitive methane emissions and improve combustion efficiency. We implement systematic leak detection and repair programs, prioritizing potential higher emitting sources.

We implement and continue to develop effective technologies and practices for monitoring and reducing methane emissions and consider them in our project engineering and design.

We provide financial and operational support for the development and deployment of innovative technologies and approaches that monitor and reduce methane emissions.

2. Advance Strong Performance across the Gas Supply Chain

Given that it is necessary to understand methane emissions across the whole natural gas supply chain, we seek to engage with upstream, midstream and downstream participants to undertake studies to that end.

Through industry partnerships, trade associations and proactive stakeholder engagement, we work to help improve approaches to and the application of robust methane emissions management, including sound estimation, detection and abatement practices, as well as robust reporting as defined in Principle 5.

3. Improve Accuracy of Methane Emissions Data

In operated assets, we continuously improve methane emissions data collection methodologies to improve the accuracy of methane emissions data.

We will support research that improves the accuracy of the quantification of methane emissions, and make progress towards verifiable reductions.

4. Advocate Sound Policy and Regulations on Methane Emissions

We advocate for sound methane policies and regulations that incentivise early action, drive performance improvements, facilitate proper enforcement, and support flexibility and innovation.

We work constructively with international institutions, governments, industry and NGOs in the development and implementation of effective methane abatement policies or regulations.

5. Increase Transparency

We provide information in our relevant external reports on methane emissions data, methodologies used to derive these data, and progress and challenges in methane emissions management.

We contribute towards the standardization of comparable external methane reporting, thereby simplifying the reporting process, which may encourage others to participate.

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Our latest technical webinar – “Evaluation of Downwind and Offshore Solutions for Methane Detection and Quantification” is now available on MGP YouTube channel. Click below to watch and don’t forget to subscribe!