Last week, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) released its Emissions Monitoring Report 2024.

The NTSA regulates the oil and gas, offshore hydrogen, and carbon storage industries and helps drive the North Sea energy transition, realising the significant potential of the UK Continental Shelf as a critical energy and carbon abatement resource. The organisation also holds industry to account on reducing emissions and, since 2021, has published annual Emissions Monitoring Reports which present a wide range of data on overall greenhouse gas (GHG) and methane emissions, and benchmark performance, flaring, and venting to track industry’s progress.

According to the report, emissions are down 7% in 2024 and 34% since 2018. This is attributed to “the NSTA’s robust and proactive approach to regulation and management, industry investment in technologies which reduce flaring, and initiatives to make equipment such as compressors more fuel efficient.”

The report states that combustion of hydrocarbons for offshore power generation made up 79% of emissions in 2023, followed by flaring, 17%, venting, 3%, with other non-combustion processes making up the rest.

Amongst the most encouraging of the report’s findings was that in 2023, UKCS upstream GHG emissions fell by an estimated 4%, contributing to a reduction of 28% between 2018 and 2023. 50% of the reductions achieved between 2018 and 2023 were through active emission reduction measures, with the rest linked to assets going offline or approaching Cessation of Production (CoP). Also, operators reduced flaring by 2.4% in 2024, contributing to a drop of 49% between 2018 and 2023.

The report concludes that in terms of the NSTA Business as Usual scenario (BAU) – which carries forward implemented measures but assumes no further abatement to create a baseline – achieving the 2030 target of 50% appears within reach. This, say the writers, is a great testament to the work already done, but “does not diminish the urgency of further abatement.”

Download the full report here.