Before drilling for more oil and gas, let’s stop wasting what we already have

This piece was first published by Business Green.

Tackling methane is an underused but critical emergency brake on climate change – it’s time the UK used it.

The argument over new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea has become painfully familiar. One side says new drilling is incompatible with climate goals. The other claims domestic production is essential for energy security and, supposedly, British oil and gas is cleaner than imports.

That last claim is repeated so often it has acquired the status of accepted fact. But, before ministers approve another well, they should answer a simple question: can UK oil and gas really be clean if vast quantities of methane are being leaked into the atmosphere?

The industry’s dirty secret
Responsible for around a third of the global warming the world is experiencing today, methane is a climate superpollutant. Because natural gas is mostly methane, every leak from an oil or gas installation sends this powerful greenhouse gas directly into the air.

For years, methane has been largely invisible, both literally and politically, allowing a major source of climate harm to fly under the radar. Cutting its emissions is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to slow down global warming in the short term.

What is troubling is that we don’t know how much methane the UK’s oil and gas industry is leaking. Operators are required to report their own emissions to regulators, and they typically base their reports on estimations rather than direct measurements. There’s no requirement for independent third party verification to confirm what they say.

Operators marking their own homework isn’t working
We wouldn’t ask a company to calculate its own tax bill without an independent audit. Yet when it comes to this powerful driver of climate change, we are relying on the polluters self-reporting.

The consequences are predictable. Research has repeatedly shown that methane emissions from UK oil and gas operations could be underestimated by at least a factor of five, and possibly much higher. Satellite observations and independent investigations increasingly find evidence of unreported leaks and releases that raise uncomfortable questions about the accuracy of official inventories. Evidence reviewed by Green Alliance points to methane emissions from some offshore platforms potentially being 100 times higher than reported figures suggest.

This matters, because whether or not methane leaks are a major problem sits at the heart of questions around whether UK production really is cleaner than imported fuels, and whether the claims being made hold up.

If methane emissions from UK operations are being systematically underestimated, then the foundation of the “cleaner than imports” argument looks much less secure. Of course, emissions from imports might be underestimated too but, in the case of Norway, the UK’s largest source of oil and gas imports, there have been stricter regulations and better practices in place for 50 years already.

This is also about wasted energy
Methane leaking from a pipeline, vent stack or production facility is not just pollution, it is also lost energy that could have been used by homes and businesses.

Recent North Sea records show that venting and flaring alone continue to waste enormous quantities of gas. In 2024, enough gas was lost to supply 570,000 homes, equivalent to all the homes in South Yorkshire, where I live.

Fortunately, this is one of the most solvable climate challenges we face. The technologies already exist to do it. Infrared cameras can identify otherwise invisible leaks. Continuous monitoring systems can detect the emissions in real time. New satellite tracking is beginning to reveal methane plumes from individual sites, including offshore installations that have historically been difficult to monitor.

Regulation is missing
The government should require operators to measure methane emissions directly wherever possible, rather than relying primarily on estimates. And reporting should be independently verified. Regular leak detection and repair programmes should be mandatory across the oil and gas sector. And routine venting and flaring should be phased out as quickly as practicable, rather than tolerated as business as usual. Norway has treated this as standard practice since the 1970s.

Before there’s another argument about opening new oil and gas fields, let’s deal with the pollution and waste coming from existing UK infrastructure. Tackling methane is an, as yet, underused but very important ‘emergency brake’ on climate change. With the summer we’re having, it’s definitely time we used it.