Methane Emissions and Regulatory Stringency: A Case Study Across Canadian Provinces

Canada enacted its first federal methane regulations for the oil and gas sector in 2020; however, these federal regulations were ultimately implemented as separate provincial regulations that were each negotiated under federal-provincial regulatory equivalency agreements.  This has resulted in significant variation in regulatory stringency, enforcement practices, and approaches to methane mitigation.  These differences present a unique opportunity to examine the direct impact of different regulations on methane emissions in adjacent regions, with otherwise similar production characteristics and operators.

In this work we utilize aerial survey data collected using Bridger Photonics’ Gas Mapping LiDAR to compare methane emissions across jurisdictions operating under different regulatory frameworks. First, we examine emissions in the Lloydminster heavy oil production region that straddles the Alberta–Saskatchewan provincial border.  Higher allowable venting limits means Saskatchewan’s regulatory framework is substantially weaker than Alberta’s. This directly correlates with a near doubling of methane emissions intensities among comparable production facilities with similar infrastructure.  Moreover, for six producers with multiple assets on both sides of the border, five had higher methane intensities in Saskatchewan.  These real-world data highlight the critical importance of regulations in driving mitigation, while simultaneously highlighting the limits of voluntary action.

A further case study examines the Peace River region in Alberta, in which a small sub-region was subjected to stricter regulations (Alberta Directive 084), introduced in response to odour complaints, while immediately adjacent regions were not.  These regulations effectively prohibit routine venting and, despite not explicitly targeting methane, resulted in substantially lower measured methane emissions among facilities within the Directive 084 zone than among similar facilities outside the zone.  Interestingly, these stricter regulations further correlate not only with reductions in occurrence rates of venting tanks but also in a reduction of unlit flares.  Overall, these empirical observations demonstrate that producers in both Alberta and Saskatchewan can and do achieve measurably greater methane reductions but are unlikely to do so without a clear regulatory requirement.