(Bloomberg) -- Turkmenistan’s state-owned gas producer is planning to enlist specialists to help pinpoint methane releases, a major advance in the nation’s efforts to curb emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
Turkmengaz is working on issuing a tender seeking bids for methane surveillance in the coming months, and potentially as soon as January, according to people familiar with the matter. The plans were previewed at the Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan conference in October, they said, asking not to be named because the details are still being drafted.
The solicitation would mark a big push to acquire satellite data, and potentially even detect and fix releases of the planet-warming gas. It also represents action toward addressing methane leaks amid a years-long quest by the country, environmental groups and other nations, including the US, to stifle those emissions.
Methane is at least 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the environment in the first two decades after it enters the atmosphere. Sparsely populated Turkmenistan sits atop one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves and spews more methane per unit of oil and gas output than any other major supplier, according to the International Energy Agency’s latest Methane Tracker report.
A call to the phone number listed on Turkmengaz’s website wasn’t answered and the company didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Cutting methane emissions would represent a remarkable shift for the country in just three years since the launch of a global pledge to slash spewing the gas by 30% by 2030. At the time, Turkmenistan’s emissions of the gas were spiraling out of control and into the atmosphere, leaking from aging energy infrastructure and one massive burning crater.
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Methane Pledge
Last year Turkmenistan said it was signing on to the global methane pledge that now represents nearly 160 nations. In recent months, the country and its state-run energy companies have developed a road map for cutting at least a third of its methane emissions by the end of the decade. It is in the process of imposing its first-ever regulations to clamp down on the problem.
The Central Asian nation’s cabinet has adopted a road map that the foreign affairs ministry said would drive “radical modernization of energy infrastructure” and the implementation of “other appropriate measures” to help meet methane-cutting commitments.
“The collective actions and the collective goals that we are seeing coming out of Turkmenistan should be seen as one of those things that really gives people hope in a time where hope is not very prevalent,” said Jonathan Banks, global director of methane pollution prevention at the Clean Air Task Force.
To be sure, emissions will not fall immediately. Many of the efforts are still in their infancy, teeing up spending and action that is necessary to wrest control over the country’s massive methane problem in coming years. And once emissions are identified it will still require engineers in the field to replace equipment or make operational changes to halt the releases.
But satellite observations suggest there’s been some progress. Emissions in the nation’s eastern and western basins fell about 10% between 2020 and 2023, according to an analysis of the data by Kayrros SAS. That’s the second-biggest drop among 13 fossil fuel-producing regions tracked by the environmental monitoring company, only behind Australia’s Bowen Basin.
--With assistance from Zulfugar Agayev.
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