S&P Global Launches Comprehensive Framework for Assessing Reliability of Estimates of Greenhouse Gas Intensity for Crude Oil

A comprehensive new study by S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) provides new guidance and methodology that improves comparability, consistency and confidence in assessing the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of crude oil.

The study, entitled The Right Measure builds on existing literature, standards and practices to address some of the unique challenges that currently limit utility of life-cycle GHG emissions estimates of crude oil. It also proposes a new “Data Quality Metric”—a framework to improve the transparency around the reliability of estimates—developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The study includes a demonstration of the new guidance and methodology by creating a benchmark representing the average intensity of crude oil consumed in North America. The results assess the crude oil pathways that comprise over 90% of the volume processed in the United States in 2019 and represents the most current and comprehensive assessment to date.

The complete report is available at: https://ihsmarkit.com/Info/1020/right-measure.html?utm_campaign=PC0219 ...

“Not all GHG emissions estimates of are created equal,” said Cathy Crawford, director, GHG estimation and coordination, S&P Global and co-author of the study. “Understanding GHG emissions can require data that may not have historically been gathered or reported across companies and regions, which affects the quality of estimates. This new comprehensive study builds on existing standards and practices to construct a guidebook that addresses some of the remaining sources of inconsistency with life-cycle GHG emissions that are unique to the estimation of crude oil.”

“Applying this new S&P Global method, S&P Global has created the most current and arguably the most comprehensive assessment of the average GHG intensity of crude oil processed in the United States,” said Kevin Birn, vice president, GHG estimation and coordination, S&P Global and the study co-author.

“What the market has been looking for is a credible and equitable yardstick when it comes to assessing oil and gas GHG emissions,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman, S&P Global. “This study advances several of the critical building blocks needed in the market while also being very transparent where some of the challenges that remain.”

For the study, S&P Global undertook a systematic review of existing GHG quantification guidance and identified four main remaining sources of differences between life-cycle crude oil estimates—System Boundaries, Coproducts, Units of Measurement and Data Quality.