The Global State of Methane Regulations

Today, 13 October 2026, the International Gas Union (IGU) released its first report on the Global State of Methane Regulation. IGU’s assessment calls for greater international alignment, mutual recognition and a practical framework to strengthen methane abatement without duplicating compliance requirements.

Methane performance is fast becoming a condition of market access, contract award and capital allocation simultaneously, in different legal forms, in different places.

The Gas industry supports effective methane-abatement regulatory measures to drive transparent and credible data, monitoring, reporting and verification and many IGU members are already committed to reducing their methane emissions by at least 30%, and to operating with near-zero leaks, by 2030.

The global average upstream methane intensity declined by 10% between 2019 and 2025, reflecting the expansion of corporate sustainability and asset-integrity programmes as well as the systematic alignment of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) practices with internationally accepted standards.

However, as methane performance increasingly influences market access, commercial contracts and investment decisions, the challenge is no longer simply that related to the introduction of new rules, it is ensuring that different regulatory systems can work together.

Compliance methodologies need to be available before related obligations or penalties become enforceable, giving suppliers and buyers sufficiently clear rules and transition arrangements to make long-term commitments and ensure that natural gas continues to be delivered seamlessly to where it is needed the most.

The Report identifies five principal regulatory approaches: market-access requirements, domestic operational controls, fiscal instruments, buyer-led procurement frameworks, together with mandatory reporting and climate-governance systems. While these approaches share elements of common purpose, they differ in their measurement methodologies, verification requirements, emissions-intensity calculations, implementation timelines and rules for attributing emissions data to traded natural gas.

IGU’s Director of Policy and Analysis, Mr Mark McCrory said: “Together, our global Gas industry will continue to do more and do better to tackle methane emissions, further anchoring Gas’s key role in driving human progress and global growth. Peer-to-peer sharing and the regionally based dialogues that IGU facilitates are powerful mechanisms for knowledge-sharing and building the capacity and ambition necessary to drive methane emissions out of the full natural gas value chain.”