Williams has joined the Collaboratory for Advancing Methane Science (CAMS), an industry-led research consortium that works to better characterize and understand methane emissions. CAMS members work collaboratively to provide actionable, transparent methane science to contribute to the understanding of methane emissions across the oil and gas value chain and inform mitigation strategies.

Williams joins other CAMS members, including Cheniere, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, Sempra LNG and Shell, that share this commitment to advancing methane science in the public domain.

“As one of the nation’s largest energy infrastructure companies, it is critical to Williams’ mission that we collaborate on the development and evaluation of methane reduction technologies,” said Mark Gebbia, vice president of Environmental, Regulatory and Permitting at Williams. “Joining CAMS’ efforts to create accurate quantification and monitoring of methane emissions not only helps Williams reach our climate commitment goals, but also aids the natural gas industry as we come together in our advancement of clean energy.”

The collaborative’s first project, the Methane Emission Estimate Tool (MEET), resulted in the development of a community modeling tool for constructing inventories of emissions from producing oil and gas operations, enabling operators to evaluate effectiveness of both detection and mitigation strategies. Subsequent projects sponsored by CAMS have applied this tool to simulate areas of higher methane concentrations in association with Project Astra, a pioneering multi-operator sensor network that leverages advances in methane-sensing technologies and data analytics to provide comprehensive and near-continuous monitoring.

Looking ahead, CAMS members are planning to focus on improving our understanding of satellite emissions data as well as create refined emissions profiles and methane abatement strategies for natural gas pneumatic control devices.

Williams was the first North American midstream company to set a near-term climate commitment. The goal includes a 56% absolute reduction from 2005 levels in company greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – putting us on a path to be net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.