Do Methane Emissions Matter to Investors? Lessons from the I-MER Investor Briefing
Methane emissions are no longer seen only as an environmental problem – they are increasingly becoming a financial and investment risk. From sudden market losses triggered by methane leaks to growing pressure from investors for better emissions data, the topic is rapidly moving higher on the agenda of both financial institutions and policymakers.
On 9 April 2026, the I-MER project hosted a dedicated investor briefing exploring how improved data, regulatory frameworks, and investor engagement are reshaping the way the oil and gas industry accounts for – and reduces – fugitive methane emissions. The webinar brought together experts from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the UN Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), and one of the world’s largest asset managers, Amundi.
Methane Risk Is Already Moving Markets
The event was organised by the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE) and RoSIF, with support from EDF and the European Climate Initiative (EUKI), in partnership with the Singapore Green Finance Centre. It is part of Work Package 5 of the I-MER project, focused on investor outreach.
Ismael Hernandez Rivera, Senior Manager for Sustainable Finance at EDF, opened with a striking example: in September 2025, Australian oil and gas company Santos lost 10% of its market value in a single day following the revelation of a long-running methane leak at its Darwin LNG plant. The incident – rooted in a design fault present since the facility’s commissioning – also affected an ongoing acquisition by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The message was clear: methane is not only a climate issue. It is a financial one.
Methane is responsible for roughly 22% of global warming over a 100-year horizon, but over 20 years, that share rises to 45%. In the energy sector alone, it accounts for 22% of total methane emissions. Crucially, nearly half of oil and gas methane abatement opportunities come at zero or negative cost – meaning that capturing leaked gas is not just good for the climate, it can also recover revenue.
OGMP 2.0: The Gold Standard for Methane Reporting
A significant portion of the webinar focused on the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP 2.0), a comprehensive measurement-based reporting framework housed under UNEP’s IMEO. Georgie Passalaris, who leads stakeholder engagement at IMEO, provided an overview of the initiative’s current state.
OGMP 2.0 now counts 157 member companies – a number that continues to grow week by week – representing approximately 45% of global oil and gas production. The framework is structured around five reporting levels, with levels four and five requiring direct measurement of emissions at the source and site level, respectively. OGMP 2.0 also serves as the basis for the EU Methane Regulation.
Companies moving through the levels often report an initial increase in disclosed emissions – not because they are emitting more, but because more accurate measurement reveals sources that were previously unaccounted for. As Hernandez Rivera explained, this is the first and necessary step toward actually fixing those leaks. Case studies from ConocoPhillips, Chenier, Petrobras, and ENI illustrated the diversity of this journey: some companies see emissions intensity temporarily rise before falling sharply, while others are able to fix issues in parallel with their measurement campaigns.
By the end of 2024, reported data showed that 88% of operated asset emissions among companies in their third or fourth year of reporting were based on measured data – a significant leap in data quality. Looking forward, IMEO projects that assets responsible for over 1,000 billion cubic metres of natural gas supply are on track to reach level five reporting by 2030, exceeding the total volume currently imported into the EU, China, Japan, and South Korea combined.
Despite this progress, a critical gap remains: 50% of the global oil and gas industry has yet to join OGMP at this level of detailed reporting.
The Investor Perspective: Engagement, Not Just Exclusion
Aaron McDougall from Amundi’s Investment Solutions team offered the investor perspective. Amundi, one of the world’s largest asset managers with approximately USD 2 trillion in assets under management, has been engaging with companies on methane as part of its broader responsible investment strategy. Last year alone, the firm engaged with nearly 3,000 individual companies on climate and ESG topics, and since OGMP’s inception, has encouraged hundreds of companies to join the initiative and move up through its reporting levels.
McDougall emphasised that effective engagement requires understanding the specific context of each company – its asset mix, geography, infrastructure age, and the regulatory environment it operates in. A concentrated asset like a single LNG terminal presents very different measurement challenges than a 5,000-kilometre transmission network spanning multiple countries.
From a financial standpoint, excessive methane leakage signals potential issues with asset integrity and operational efficiency – concerns that matter just as much to financial analysts as to climate advocates. As the discussion illustrated with a vivid analogy: a dairy farmer spilling 20% of their milk every day would rightly want to fix that.
A Conversation Just Getting Started
The webinar closed with a discussion on the limits of current data and the challenge of estimating emissions from the half of the industry that remains outside any structured reporting framework. While a global estimate of “what we’re missing” may be theoretically possible, panellists cautioned that it would carry significant uncertainty – a point that underscores the urgency of broader OGMP adoption.For the I-MER project and its partners, this event marks the beginning of a sustained research and engagement effort on investor perspectives. As Theodor Cojoianu, the webinar’s moderator, put it: “This is also a start of the conversation.” The team plans to continue building on these discussions, working with researchers and practitioners to deepen understanding of how financial markets can play a more active role in driving methane mitigation.
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All project publications, as well as up-to-date information on ongoing activities, are available at the project website: www.fabiz.ase.ro/implementing-the-eu-methane-emission-regulation-i-mer-in-romania-and-czechia/.