‘We Can Handle It’: Why Oil and Gas Needs to Police Its Own Emissions

Any discussion about the oil and gas sector’s environmental goals is incomplete without scrutinizing its carbon emissions. With climate change dominating headlines and now the SECs looming mandatory disclosure rules, effective steps to reduce emissions—and report them—have become more critical than ever.

Despite the oil and gas industry’s progress in dealing with climate challenges, activists and policymakers are constantly on the lookout to jump in and enforce rules and policies to regulate the industry’s emissions. This is mainly due to lack of alignment within the sector, said Drew Pomerantz, emissions management technical lead with Schlumberger, speaking during a panel discussion at Hart Energy’s recently held Energy ESG Conference in Dallas.

“I know that the industry is big and diverse and it’s not realistic to expect everybody to agree about everything but our industry—like most other industries—is judged on the performance of the worst of us,” Pomerantz noted.