Synthesis of the ROMEO Project Findings: Assessing Romania’s O&G Methane Emissions and Advancing Accurate Methane Emission Inventories

Romania is one of Europe’s oldest oil and gas (O&G) producers with a history dating back to 1857 and remains one of the major producers within the EU. The country’s O&G sector continues to play a significant role in the regional energy supply, and recent discoveries of large natural gas reserves in the Black Sea highlight Romania’s interest in even further development. However, the recent EU regulation on methane (CH₄) emissions requires member states to mitigate and to improve accuracy of measurement, reporting, and verification of emissions. Uncertainty in current CH₄ emission estimates and the lack of empirical data until now presents significant challenges in meeting climate objectives.

The ROMEO (ROmanian Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas) project aimed to provide independent, scientific estimates of CH₄ emissions from Romania’s onshore O&G sector. Using a range of measurement techniques including ground-based, drone-based, and airborne-based platforms, the project focused on the upstream O&G sector during three intensive campaigns in 2019 and 2021. Phase I targeted the oil production region of southern Romania, Phase II focused on gas production sites in Transylvania, and Phase III involved a follow-up survey in southern Romania. Results from the studies reveal a significant underestimation of CH₄ emissions in the national inventory from Romania’s O&G industry in 2019 and 2021, highlighting the substantial mitigation potential within the country’s O&G production infrastructure.

This synthesis consolidates findings from the ROMEO project’s multi-scale measurement campaigns and offers a comprehensive assessment of CH₄ emissions across facility types and regions in Romania. The implications of these findings are also discussed for both mitigation strategies and inventory reporting. One of the challenges is that activity data used for the measurements (e.g. oil production sites and other infrastructure locations) are not the same as the ones used in the reporting in countries using the Tier 1 approach (e.g. oil or gas production rates). This simple difference fundamentally complicates the direct incorporation of research findings into the reporting.  We explore how field measurements can more effectively inform and improve inventory methodologies and support the development of more accurate emissions inventories.