Over a dozen ministers from governments around the world have published statements calling for urgent action to significantly cut the ‘venting, leakage and flaring’ of natural gas from oil and gas operations that currently accounts for over eight per cent of total natural gas that is lost annually.

Members of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) have announced their intention to work with leading oil and gas companies to ‘act against and dramatically reduce’ worldwide methane and black carbon emissions and curb the annual loss of US $27 to $63 billion (£17 to 40 billion) that these leakages produce each year.

Behind agriculture, oil and gas activities are the second largest manmade cause of worldwide methane emissions, as they release nearly two gigations of greenhouse gas each year, of which 80 per cent are methane gases.

Black carbon, produced by flaring, or the burning off of waste flammable gases, poses significant risks to human health in areas such as the Arctic.

According to the CCAC, aggressive action on these pollutants could reduce ‘0.5 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050, prevent over two million premature deaths each year, and avoid over 30 million tons of annual crop losses by 2030’.

Building on the work already carried out by the Natural Gas STAR International Program, the Global Methane Initiative, and the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership in this field, the CCAC aims to help companies speed up and extend their voluntary emission reductions and publicise the efforts of companies who take significant action to reduce their emissions.

Stephanie Pfeifer, Executive Director of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) said: “Methane venting and leakage from oil and gas production results in substantial economic and environmental costs. Investors are concerned with these costs and have been working with companies to ensure methane leakage is measured and effectively tackled.

“Ministerial support for the Climate and Clean Air Coalition is a welcome one and we hope will accelerate global efforts to achieve voluntary reductions by companies. Governments also have a very important role to play by ensuring regulation is in place for reducing methane emissions. Alongside governments and industry, we look forward to making further progress on this issue in the coming months.”

The CCAC is currently collaborating with ‘leading oil and gas companies’ to come up with an initiative that it hopes will ‘quickly and meaningfully achieve substantial climate, air quality, health, environmental, operational, and financial benefits’. The CCAC’s first negotiations with interested oil and gas industry bodies are already underway.

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Edward Davey, was one of the ministers who released a statement and though he praised the CCAC's recent activity, he emphasised the need for further action.

He said: “It is crucial that everyone plays a part in tackling climate change and I warmly welcome all those companies and countries that have voluntarily committed to substantially reduce venting, leakage, and flaring of natural gas from oil and gas production operations. I urge others in the oil and gas sectors to do likewise.

“The UK is fully supportive of all or any action to reduce short lived climate pollutants which are a crucial complement to action on carbon dioxide and other pollutants. We are therefore fully committed to maximising the great potential of the CCAC to achieve additional emissions reductions.

“However, the climate benefits of this valuable work will count for little if we are unable to achieve sufficient ambition in the main UNFCCC negotiations and to limit global average temperature rise to below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The most cost effective way to achieve this is through an international, legally binding agreement.”

As part of the UK’s commitments to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the UK government yesterday (28 January) officially launched the ‘Green Deal’, an initiative which it hopes will increase the energy-efficiency and decrease the detrimental environmental impacts of Britain’s buildings, currently thought to produce 38 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Set up by Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, Sweden and the Unites States along with the United Nations Environment Programme in February 2012, the CCAC is now made up of 50 partners and works to reduce ‘short lived climate pollutants’, or substances that remain in the atmosphere for a relatively short time (a few days to a few decades) and contribute to global warming. These include methane, black carbon and hydroflourocarbons (HFCs).

Read more about the CCAC.