Fig. 6: Reconciling the methane emission reporting gap in the oil and gas sector of Alberta and Saskatchewan for tracking changes in emissions.

This figure illustrates improvements due to major methodological changes for the 2024 oil and gas methane inventory in Canada and the projections (light pink bars) of the ensemble inverse estimates fulfilling the reduction targets by 2025 and 2030. These projections are compared against the 2010–2014 inverse emission baseline, calculated at 3.1 Mt/year. Error bars indicate ±1 standard deviation of the 5-year mean inverse estimates. The 2024 methodological refinements significantly reduce the gap between inverse emission estimates and inventory data, shown as upward adjustments in light blue. The figure compares the 5-year mean energy-related methane emissions, primarily from the oil and gas sector, as reported in the 2021 (black), 2022 (gray), and 2023 (blue) NIRs with inverse estimates. The red bars represent emissions based on tower measurement-based inverse estimates. The three spatial distributions of prior emissions used in the ensemble inversions are shown in brown^47,48,49.