Chevron Corporation published a methane report that builds on Chevron’s ongoing efforts to promote transparency on climate-related matters. This report details information on Chevron’s approach to detecting, measuring and reducing methane intensity. Since 2016, Chevron has reduced the company’s methane intensity by 50 percent. Chevron’s U.S. upstream methane intensity is 85 percent lower than the U.S. upstream production sector average as of 2020.

“Our strategy is clear – leverage our strengths to safely deliver lower carbon energy to a growing world. Effective methane management is important for lower carbon intensity oil and gas production,” said Balaji Krishnamurthy, corporate vice president of Strategy and Sustainability. “Chevron’s ambition is to be a global leader in methane emissions performance. Our goal is simple – keep methane in the pipe.”

Chevron is taking action to meet that aim through reducing methane intensity, improving methane detection and advancing measurement. In particular, we aim to design and operate facilities to help prevent methane emissions and deploy technologies to validate performance, inform repairs and improve inventories.

In the Permian Basin, as part of the standard design, we include vapor recovery units for tank batteries and compressor stations. Since 2011, we have included compressed air for pneumatic controllers to eliminate methane emissions from that source. In addition, we have committed to designing, where possible, all new upstream facilities to operate without routine methane emissions.

Chevron is testing emerging technology and incorporating innovative solutions into our methane management programs. We are working toward integrating comprehensive direct measurement into existing emission factor-based inventories as protocols are developed and technologies become more widely available to improve methane detection at both the site and source levels. Since 2016, we have tested 13 advanced detection and measurement technologies. The full Methane Report is available here.

This report includes information that addresses a stockholder proposal requesting Chevron to report on the reliability of methane emissions disclosures, a proposal the Board of Directors recommended stockholders support, and which passed at the company’s 2022 Annual Stockholders Meeting in May.