Fact Check: S&P Permian Basin Emissions Report
This Summer, S&P Global released a report claiming that “Methane Emissions Intensity of Permian Basin Declined by More than Half in Two Years.” The Texas Oil and Gas Association called it a “groundbreaking achievement” that was testament to “the hard work, proactive efforts, and constant innovation of Texas oil and natural gas operators.” This report drove significant media coverage with headlines touting the big reductions in Permian methane emissions from oil and gas production but unfortunately the evidence does not back up those claims and this is not peer-reviewed work.
- The report’s data is sourced from Insight M, a for profit emissions monitoring company, that uses aerial flyover data to estimate emissions. S&P’s own report notes that Insight M’s error rate is 40% (pg 6). That alone should give pause on the results since a 50% reduction over two years is well within the margin of error for the study’s methodology.
- Insight M has also co-written reports covering the Permian during the same time period with wildly different conclusions which makes their credibility suspect. A report authored earlier this year by Insight M, EDF and Harvard concluded that Permian emissions intensity was nearly 4% in 2022 (when S&P and Insight M said it was .93%) and 3.2% in 2023 (when S&P and Insight M said it was .62%).
- Insight M also cannot detect small plumes and academic analysis has shown that only about 70% of Insight M’s measurements are within 50% of the actual plume volume.
- Despite the exciting title, S&P acknowledges that InsightM’s data is inconsistent with satellite analysis of the Permian Basin: “Sentinel-5P estimates that total Permian methane emissions attributed to upstream were down only slightly from 2023 to 2024, in contrast to the overflight-derived estimates, which show a larger decrease. This serves as an important reminder that while our ability to quantify methane is improving conflicting estimates will continue to trouble the methane emissions space.”
- S&P also acknowledges that the satellite data showing a negligible decrease in intensity, covers more Permian sites, analyzes them more frequently and has no limitations on detecting small plumes. It is not clear given those advantages why S&P would focus on flyover data.
Source: S&P
- S&P also acknowledges that the satellite data showing a negligible decrease in intensity, covers more Permian sites, analyzes them more frequently and has no limitations on detecting small plumes. It is not clear given those advantages why S&P would focus on flyover data.
- S&P claims that regulation rollbacks should not concern environmentalists because emissions controls “makes economic sense.” However, they also acknowledge that low (and in the Permian often negative) gas prices have ensured that controls are not “a driver of corporate value” and “finding and fixing methane leaks did not move the needle from a revenue point of view” which seems to contradict their conclusions.
- S&P’s pro-industry bias is most on display in its discussion on the impacts of rescinding the waste emissions charge. They claim that their contacts in the remote sensing industry have told them that now that operators will not be penalized for emissions, operators are more willing to invest in technology to detect their emissions. Rather than reporting that as the scandal that it is, S&P frames this as a good thing, an “ironic” benefit of revoking the waste emissions charge.
- S&P acknowledges that “methane technologies will produce a variety of estimates and conclusions. At least for the immediate term, this could lead to confusion about the actual level of methane emissions.” In response, S&P commits to providing scores for the reliability of any data they use, but none of the report’s data is actually public. It has not been peer reviewed and cannot be independently analyzed. Worse, some of it relies on proprietary modeling, so even if the data were public, the results could not be replicated. None of these practices would be acceptable in a genuinely impartial academic analysis.
- Despite framing from oil and gas interests that the report shows “Permian methane emissions dropped 50%,” the report focuses on methane intensity not gross methane emissions. Due to increasing production, methane intensity improvements have been larger than gross emissions improvements. Gross emissions from the Permian basin are still so large that they are the climate equivalent of over 100 power plants.
- Even if Insight M’s data is accurate, these intensities are still remarkably high. The industry’s own climate initiative set a methane intensity goal of .2% which it claims to have achieved in 2021. Why are the industry and S&P celebrating data showing that major production areas are emitting nearly double that goal four years later?
Given the uncertainty in S&P’s data and S&P’s own acknowledgement of comparable data showing minimal progress on emissions, the topline conclusions of this report should be met with skepticism.