Mexico's Oil and Gas Methane Regulation: Global Best Practice

Just over a year ago, in November 2018, Mexico published the most comprehensive regulation for oil and gas methane to date. We wrote about the reasoning and circumstances of it in a previous blog post. The regulation set out a process that companies would follow to implement measures to reduce methane emissions from their operations. The most immediate steps call for development of an “emissions diagnostic” (an assessment that identifies and quantifies all methane emissions in each facility) and submission of a plan to implement a suite of required mitigation measures in the next 6 years.

The companies had one year from the regulation’s publication to develop the diagnostic and come up with a “Program for Prevention and Comprehensive Control of Methane Emissions” or PPCIEM from its name in Spanish. A 3 month period would follow to have the PPCIEM verified by a 3rd party before it had to be submitted to ASEA, the country’s regulator for the oil and gas sector. Given that the deadline for submission is fast approaching (March 31st, 2020), we thought it would be timely to review in more detail the ac