Eight-Year Estimates of Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Operations in Western Canada Are Nearly Twice Those Reported in Inventories

Abstract

The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan account for 70% of Canada's methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. In 2018, the Government of Canada introduced methane regulations to reduce emissions from the sector by 40-45% from the 2012 levels by 2025. Complementary to inventory accounting methods, the effectiveness of regulatory practices to reduce emissions can be assessed using atmospheric measurements and inverse models. Total anthropogenic (oil and gas, agriculture, and waste) emission rates of methane from 2010 to 2017 in Alberta and Saskatchewan were derived using hourly atmospheric methane measurements over a six-month winter period from October to March. Scaling up the winter estimate to annual indicated an anthropogenic emission rate of 3.7 ± 0.7 MtCH₄/year, about 60% greater than that reported in Canada's National Inventory Report (2.3 MtCH₄). This discrepancy is tied primarily to the oil and gas sector emissions as the reported emissions from livestock operations (0.6 MtCH₄) are well substantiated in both top-down and bottom-up estimates and waste management (0.1 MtCH₄) emissions are small. The resulting estimate of 3.0 MtCH₄ from the oil and gas sector is nearly twice that reported in Canada's National Inventory (1.6 MtCH₄).