US upstream group launches GHG tracking template
The American Petroleum Institute (API), whose 600 members produce the majority of the oil and gas in the US, said June 24 it had launched a new template to assist companies to track and report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions more consistently.
Many oil and gas companies – upstream, midstream and downstream – have been tracking and reporting their GHG emissions for more than two decades, but in widely different formats. The API’s template is intended to provide a consistent and uniform set of core GHG indicators that will enable enhanced comparability in climate change reporting.
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Its use is not mandatory, the API said, but it expects many of its members – and other companies – will choose to use it. First reporting based on the template is expected in 2022.
“As an industry of engineers and problem solvers, we measure and track progress in everything we do and aim to share relevant data transparently,” API CEO Mike Sommers said in prepared remarks to the Houston Economic Club. “Working with our members, the financial community and throughout the supply chain, this reporting template builds on our robust sustainability efforts and elevates the consistency and comparability needed for tracking climate-related progress from company to company.”
The template standardises the names of indicators, units of measure and detailed definitions for reporting boundaries and prompts for data on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. It isn’t intended to capture data on Scope 3 emissions.
It includes indicators on a company’s efforts to mitigate GHG emissions, including through carbon capture, utilisation and sequestration (CCUS), the purchase of credits for renewable energy and total offsets retired. And it provides for companies to report on their GHG reduction targets, other climate-related initiatives and third-party verification of reductions.
Development of the template was a logical next step in the API’s efforts to accelerate the energy transition, coming in the wake of its release earlier this year of its Climate Action Framework.
But the API also supported former US president Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back methane emissions regulations, opposed carbon pricing and subsidies for electric vehicles and supported candidates in the 2020 US elections who argued against the US rejoining the Paris Agreement – all measures which prompted French major TotalEnergies (at the time Total) to not renew its membership in the organisation.