The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that applications are open for $850 million in federal funding for projects that will help monitor, measure, quantify and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sectors. (DE-FOA-0003256) Oil and natural gas facilities are the nation’s largest industrial source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is many times more potent than carbon dioxide and is responsible for approximately one third of the warming from greenhouse gases occurring today.

The funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will specifically help small oil and natural gas operators reduce methane emissions and transition to available and innovative methane emissions reduction technologies, while also supporting partnerships that improve emissions measurement and provide accurate, transparent data to impacted communities.

The announcement constitutes a key part of broader technical and financial assistance to be provided by the Methane Emissions Reduction Program.

The primary objectives of this funding opportunity announcement are to:

• Help small operators significantly reduce methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations, using commercially available technology solutions for methane emissions monitoring, measurement, quantification and mitigation.

• Accelerate the repair of methane leaks from low-producing wells and the deployment of early-commercial technology solutions to reduce methane emissions from new and existing equipment such as natural gas compressors, gas-fueled engines, associated gas flares, liquids unloading operations, handling of produced water and other equipment leakage.

• Improve communities’ access to empirical data and participation in monitoring through multiple installations of monitoring and measurement technologies while establishing collaborative relationships between equipment providers and communities.

• Enhance the detection and measurement of methane emissions from oil and gas operations at regional scale, while ensuring nationwide data consistency through the creation of collaborative partnerships. These partnerships will span the country’s oil and gas-producing regions and draw in oil and natural gas owners and operators, universities, environmental justice organizations, community leaders, unions, technology developers, Tribes, state regulatory agencies, non-governmental research organizations, federally funded research and development centers and DOE’s National Laboratories.

A competitive solicitation for this funding will enable a broad range of eligible US entities to apply, including industry, academia, non-governmental organizations, Tribes and state and local governments.