CEOs Ryan Lance of ConocoPhillips (COP) and Patrick Pouyanné of TotalEnergies traded friendly barbs over business decisions and the Permian Basin compared to Senegal.

But where the leaders agreed in earnest at CERAWeek by S&P Global on March 11 was the need for a coherent U.S.-EU methane policy. 

“We can't have the European Union and the U.S. trying to do something different because they're interpreting the rules completely different,” Lance said. “Europe's trying to drive a different end game than what the U.S. is trying to drive, so that creates a lot of problems.”

The Trump administration has announced its plans to not go forward with a methane emissions charge Congress approved during the last presidential administration. In the meantime, Europe has passed a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) regime meant to drastically cut methane emissions within the country and in imported products.

Regulators consider methane to be the second-most damaging greenhouse-gas, next to CO2.

Pouyanné said that Europe is waking up to the consequences of an over-regulated regime. The EU’s rules are “back on the agenda, but it has to go from speech to action. It’s always like that, it’s a little slow,” he said.

The U.S. and EU need to coordinate regulations as the U.S. has become the dominant LNG supplier to Europe, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the continent’s preference to close down coal-fired power generation.

The two company leaders discussed differing strategies in developing sources of energy. To close the talk Pouyanné discussed TotalEnergies’ exploration and development in Senegal.

“You can have Senegal. We like the Permian,” Lance said.

Pouyanné demurred that, as a non-U.S. company, he preferred not to go up against the titans in their home territory.

Lance responded that he understood and added that he thought TotalEnergies currently did a better job of exploration than Conoco.   

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