This week’s Highwood Bulletin covers global flaring, exciting news for Highwood, the Marathon settlement, DOE methane funding, Carbon Mapper, the EU methane rule, and more. Thanks as always for reading and engaging.
Highwood awarded $2.2 million for reconciliation software
Emissions Reduction Alberta has awarded more than $44 million in their Emerging Innovators Challenge, including $2.23 million to Highwood Emissions Management. The funds will support our $4.46 million project to validate and further develop our Emissions Intelligence Platform, which enables users to perform reconciliation and build measurement-informed methane inventories. Learn more here.
Report: 2023 global gas flaring increased despite commitments
A new report by the World Bank Group’s Global Flaring and Methane Reduction Partnership shows that gas flaring in 2023 reached 148 bcm – a 7% increase over the previous year. Oil production remained constant, suggesting an increase in intensity. Nine countries, producing 50% of the world’s oil, account for 75% of flaring. Read more here.
Marathon Oil and US reach $241 million air pollution settlement
As part of an “ongoing crackdown” on methane emissions and VOCs, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice jointly announced that Marathon Oil will pay a $64.5 million penalty for violations to the Clean Air Act. Marathon will also be required to bring facilities into compliance at a price tag of $177 million. The record settlement amounts to approximately 15% of Marathon’s 2023 earnings. Learn more here.
Applications are open for $850 million in methane funding
As part of Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, the United States Department of Energy has opened applications for projects that will monitor, measure, quantify, and reduce methane emissions from the O&G industry. A total of $850 million is available. Learn more and apply here.
Carbon Mapper prepares for launch
The highly-anticipated Tanager-1, Carbon Mapper’s first satellite, is undergoing pre-launch testing at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The SpaceX rideshare mission could launch as early as this July, brining global methane coverage with an anticipated 100 kg/h 90% probability of detection level. Read more here.
MiQ announces ability to meet EU import regulations
New EU regulations require U.S. natural gas producers to comply with stringent methane emissions measurement, reporting, and verification standards to access the EU market. MiQ has announced that it is currently the only standard meeting EU requirements, as it provides a rigorous, third-party verified emissions reporting framework. Read more here.
Report: Overview and analysis of EU methane rule
The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies has published an ‘Energy Insight’ briefing on the new EU Methane Regulation. The publication provides an overview of what is changing, for whom, and by when, and includes a discussion of ‘unfinished business’ that will need to be determined before fossil fuel import requirements can be rolled out effectively. Read it here.
Highwood launches new online methane courses
Education is a core part of Highwood’s mission and is necessary to enable the success of achieving rapid methane emissions reduction amid constant change and significant complexity. As part of our Education Strategy, Highwood is pleased to announce that we will be preparing up to 10 courses on methane in 2024, available both live and on demand. Two courses are already available online via our partners at SAGA Wisdom. Explore our courses here.
Want to write for the Bulletin?
We’re always looking for guest writers who would like to contribute a Feature Article to the Highwood Bulletin. Please reach out if you’d like to write an unbiased, apolitical, solution-agnostic article for our ~2500 subscribers and ~7500 LinkedIn followers on an emissions management topic. Please reach out to our content team with your idea. Authors are fully credited and have a profile page on our website (we are happy to backlink).
Join our team! Highwood is hiring!
We currently have multiple exciting career postings on our website. If you have experience in methane emissions management and you’re looking for a career change, please reach out! Check out our active opportunities on our website by clicking here.
