Japan's state resources firm to develop standard emissions measure for LNG

10/5/2021

According to a a senior official at Japan's industry ministry, state-run Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp (JOGMEC) will develop a global standard for measuring greenhouse gas emissions in the LNG industry.

The LNG sector is facing increasing pressure to cut emissions of greenhouse gas, including methane, to help tackle climate change, but calculation methods vary by country and company.

"JOGMEC will develop a simple and highly accurate methodology for calculating GHG emissions in the LNG value chain," Shin Hosaka, commissioner at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy (ANRE) told an LNG producer-consumer conference.

The company aims to verify the methodology using actual data from LNG plants in the near future, he added. ANRE is a division of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

The methodology will be internationally comparable to promote emissions cuts in every phase of LNG production and distribution, a ministry official said, and is aimed at making new development cleaner, so new projects can secure finance.

"LNG is an important resource for the energy transition in Japan and Asia, and it needs to be developed and used more cleanly," Hosaka said.

In less than a year and a half, spot LNG prices have lurched from record lows to record highs, with the market first reeling from the impact of the pandemic and now unable to keep up with a global recovery in demand.

Hosaka said the tightness in the Asian LNG market in January and the recent surge in LNG prices underlined the fact that shrinking investment in production had made the gas market unstable.

(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Jan Harvey)