Methane, the main component in natural gas, is 86 times as powerful as carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere over a 20-year period, so cracking down on methane emissions is key to succeeding at global climate goals. Seamus O'Regan Seamus O’Regan is the Minister of Natural Resources and the Member of Parliament for St. John’s South-Mount Pearl. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, the Honourable Seamus O’Regan, today announced that Canada is joining the Three Percent Club.
The material in this public release comes from the originating organization and may be of a point-in-time nature, edited for clarity, style and length. The Minister highlighted Canada’s involvement, and the importance of energy efficiency in transitioning to a low-carbon future, during a discussion with IEA Executive Director Dr. Fatih Birol.
“Reducing oil and gas methane is one of the cheapest and easiest climate solutions, and the only one focused on the largest source of carbon emissions: oil and gas companies,” reads a statement from the environmental groups.
“The regulations and equivalency agreements were established using our best available data, and forecasts will change over time, especially now with the uncertainty created by the pandemic,” said O’Regan.
VOCM News has been informed that O’Regan is not currently accepting interviews as he is recuperating at home.
Muskrat Falls is often described as the worst public policy decision in the province's history, with the original in-service price tag ballooning from $7.4 billion in 2012 to the current figure of $13.1 billion. “Once they’re in place, it will be really hard to open those up again,” he said. “We will be actively monitoring the effectiveness of the regulations, which are that they do achieve the target of 40 to 45 per cent reductions below 2012 levels by 2025. O'Regan said the federal government has already invested nearly $400 million to support offshore workers, and pursue ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions during the oil extraction process. He’s not naive to the shifts in the at times turbulent political landscape. Husky has said adding debt to finance the project is not an option, and since the extension project is critical to the future of Husky's existing White Rose oil field — with the SeaRose FPSO as its centrepiece — that review includes Husky's larger operations in the offshore. O'Regan said the ideal fix for Husky's money problems is for the price of oil to rebound.
Asked during his press conference how he was going to fix the apparent gap in Canada’s methane target, O’Regan said methane reductions each year will depend on economic conditions, such as the number of oil and gas operations that are active. Seamus O'Regan on Friday squashed any uncertainty about a request from Husky Energy for Ottawa to inject some much-needed capital into the troubled project.