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Study: Romania has tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells and we don't know how much methane they emit
Romania has been one of the biggest and oldest oil and natural gas producers in the EU and has tens of thousands of historically abandoned wells, but nobody knows the quantity of methane emitted, according to the data of the 2Celsius Association published on the occasion of the webinar on ‘Methane emissions from oil and gas abandoned wells in Romania’ organized on last Monday.
According to the specialists, the abandoned wells raise a series of problems at international level as well, and the EU committed to obey a collective objective of reducing global methane emissions by 30% until 2030, as compared to 2020. Moreover, the new variant of the European Regulation regarding methane emissions could be adopted until the end of the year.
As regards the situation of the wells, from the data presented by Mary Kang, professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Department for Civil Engineering, at the level of 2022, their number had reached almost 130,000. At the same time, all the equipment emitted 14.3 billion cubic metres of methane.
At the beginning of March this year, during another event of 2Celsius, Andreea Calcan, from the International Observatory of Methane Emissions (IMEO), a programme of the United Nations for the Environment, invited the Romanian companies to join ‘The partnership for the reduction of methane in oil and gas operations 2.0 (OGMP 2.0), the UNEP programme regarding reporting and mitigating oil and gas emissions.
Thus, OGMP 2.0 allows the companies to direct mitigating actions and allocate the capital efficiently, as it is the only international framework for complete reporting, based on measurements, for the sector of oil and natural gas.
Another tool developed by IMEO is the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS) programme, a pilot programme launched at COP27 to detect and attribute "fugitive" methane emissions via satellite, which then notifies the responsible entity (company or government) to stimulate a response. With the help of the IMEO, the United Nations is providing free training for public authorities and oil and gas company representatives to understand the global context and methane emissions.
In his turn, Tomas Bredariol, specialist in the International Energy Agency, professor at Utrecht University and coordinator of the ROMEO programme (ROmanian Methane Emissions from Oil &Gas) mentioned that he made a series of measurements at the gas and oil infrastructure in the south part of Romania and showed that at over half of the places monitored there are methane emissions, and their amount is up to five times higher than what Romania presents.
The 2Celsius Association organised on Monday the webinar ‘Methane emissions from oil and gas abandoned wells in Romania’, event organized with the purpose of analyzing the dimension of the phenomenon, as well as identifying action methods for their limitation. The conference is part of a grant offered by Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) UK as part of its measures to promote the rapid reduction in global methane emissions in agreement with the scientific recommendations regarding climatic changes and targets assumed through the Paris Agreement.
2Celsius is a non-governmental organisation set up in 2010 with the purpose of influencing policies regarding climatic changes nationally and at European level. The association is a member of the international organisations European Environmental Bureau, Climate Action Network Europe and The European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E).
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) investigates and militates against crime and abuse in the environment.