By Toby McIntosh
The UN methane emissions project has published data on almost 3,000 significant methane emissions and contacted those potentially responsible about 7 percent of the time, according to a review of the data by Eye on Global Transparency, but it has not engaged with the country where the most emissions have been seen, Turkmenistan.
The pattern of engagement includes other anomalies, according to the data from the Methane Alert and Response System (MARS), which is run by the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
IMEO officials have stressed that their goal is not to “name and shame” emitters, but rather to engage with governments and the responsible parties about large emissions and to “support and track progress towards mitigation.” IMEO delays the public release of data by 45-75 days in order to facilitate such interactions.
Summaries of the engagements were promised by UN officials, but no summaries have been released.
EYE repeatedly sought comments from IMEO beginning April 5, but has yet to receive answers.
UNEP said in a Dec. 19 response to EYE questions, that summaries would appear “in the future versions of the platform.” (See previous EYE article.)
7 Percent Contact
The extent and pattern of engagement began emerging since early December, when IMEO started posted emissions data to its website.
As of April 5, there were 2,927 reported emissions, which IMEO learns about from a variety of satellite sources.
Less than 7 percent of the time (197 instances), IMEO has reached out to authorities about the emissions, according to the published data. If contact is made, the word “True” appears in the “notified” column of the spreadsheet.
One factor affecting the notification ratio is IMEO’s decision to focus on emissions from oil and gas sources. The oil and gas sector is by far the largest source of emissions, logged in by IMEO as the source for almost 81 percent of the reported plumes. Taking this into account, IMEO sends a notification 8.3 percent of the time regarding emissions in the oil and gas sector.
Turkmenistan Stands Out
Almost 38 percent of the emission episodes (1,107) reported by IMEO originated in Turkmenistan.
Perhaps the most unusual statistic that emerges from the IMEO data, is that no notifications were sent to Turkmenistan regarding the emissions.
By contrast, the percentage of contact for second place country of origin, the United States (325 instances) was 11.1 percent.
Similarly, IMEO contacted Algeria, the third highest emitter, 10.8 percent of the time (317 instances).
Notification Rates Uneven
No contact was reported for other countries, too.
Some of this is explained because of the IMEO focus on the oil and case sector. Most of the emissions reported from China (no IMEO notifications) come from the coal sector. The waste sector is responsible for most of the emissions in India and Bangladesh, where IMEO made no contacts, and in Pakistan, where one notification was sent.
However, even in some countries where the emissions largely come from the oil and gas sector, the data shows no outreach by IMEO, notably to Algeria, with 327 emission instances.
Others receiving no mail from IMEO were Libya (79), Russia (78), Yemen (46), Saudi Arabia (44), Syria (38), Spain (28), Poland (25) and Kuwait (22).
For other countries, the ratio of notifications to reported emissions varies substantially. Iran was contacted eight times, with 76 emissions reported (11 percent). For Kazakhstan, there were eight notifications for 43 emission instances (18 percent). Others: Uzbekistan (10 of 42 or 24 percent) and Iraq (15 of 4 or 33 percent).
And a few countries with comparatively modest instances of methane plumes, notifications were much more frequent than to the US or Algeria (both around 10 percent).
For Argentina notifications were made in 11 of 23 instances (48 percent). In Mexico, there were 12 notifications for 38 events (32 percent).
Note that IMEO reports instances of large emissions, not total emissions. So its data differs from country-by-country emissions data reported in 2024 by the International Energy Agency which ranked methane emissions the United States as highest, followed Russia, Iran and Turkmenistan.
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