This story is part of The Energy Mix’s partnership with Small Change Fund.

Another Alberta "pristine viewscape" Brad Smith/flickr

Tried-and-tested methane reduction methods could free up enough wasted natural gas to make up for twice the amount affected by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, yet Canada’s performance on methane reductions could be threatened by new regulations in Alberta that are less stringent than federal rules, according to analysis and commentary this week.

Methane is a climate super-pollutant that is shorter-lived than carbon dioxide, but carries 84 times the global warming potential over the crucial 20-year span when humanity will be scrambling to get climate change under control. In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified methane controls as one of the least expensive ways to deliver the biggest reductions in climate pollution by 2030.

But in its Global Methane Tracker 2026 released Monday, the International Energy Agency (IEA) concludes that methane reductions world-wide have stalled out. Despite methane commitments from many countries and companies, “methane emissions from the energy sector plateaued near record highs in 2025,” the Paris-based agency writes, “revealing a large implementation gap.”

“Setting reduction targets is only a first step, and it is important to ensure they are backed up by policies, implementation plans, and real actions,” IEA Chief Energy Economist Tim Gould said in a release. “This is not only a climate issue: there are also major energy security benefits that can come from tackling methane and flaring, especially at a time when the world is urgently looking for additional supply amid the current crisis.”

With the effective closure of Hormuz keeping nearly 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) out of reach, the IEA says methane controls could deliver immediate relief by making nearly 15 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas available. “Over the longer term, efforts to cut methane from oil and gas operations globally could deliver nearly 100 bcm of gas to markets each year, while eliminating non-emergency gas flaring could unlock a further 100 bcm,” the release states, citing control measures that have been known and discussed for years.

“Such savings would be double the supply volumes cut off due to the effective closure of the Strait.”

The IEA says 70% of methane emissions, 75% from oil and gas, could be abated with existing technologies. But at the moment, it doesn’t look like that leadership will come from Canada. While the country as a whole is bringing down its emissions, Alberta released methane regulations in late March that are weaker than the federal standard, just 48 hours after signing a deal with Ottawa that allowed it to postpone its reduction targets from 2030 to 2035. That agreement in principle cemented a five-year postponement of Ottawa’s 2030 methane target that first appeared in the November, 2025 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta.

Just two days later, the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) released a series of amendments to its directive on upstream petroleum industry flaring, incinerating, and venting, Directive 060. At the time, the Calgary-based Pembina Institute said the technical language in the document appeared to set a less ambitious target than the federal-provincial agreement.

“While Alberta has a right to design its own regulation, it must result in equal emissions reductions as the federal rules. Yet Alberta’s draft regulation is clearly weaker than the federal one in several key respects,” Amanda Bryant, head of Pembina’s oil and gas program, said in a release.

“We would not expect this draft regulation to be deemed legally equivalent under the forthcoming equivalency process.”

“Unless the MOU talks produce better methane regulations in Alberta, the province will be an outlier on methane in Canada, and with comparable producers across the world,” added Tim Weis, Pembina’s senior director, industrial decarbonization, in a release last month.

“The IEA is clear: methane cuts are urgent, achievable and affordable now. Instead Ottawa is rewarding delays, weak rules, and broken promises,” agreed Aly Hyder Ali, senior program manager, oil and gas at Environmental Defence Canada. “PM Carney should reject weak equivalency and enforce strong federal rules immediately.”

In its report this week, the IEA says global methane emissions are now 2.7 times higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. They account for 30% of global warming, and they’re still on the rise. The energy sector accounted for nearly 40% of the methane that went into the atmosphere in 2025, almost all of it from fossil fuels. Abandoned miles and wells released about eight million tonnes of the methane released last year.

Unlike some other researchers, the IEA says 80% of oil and gas emissions come from “upstream” exploration, development, and extraction. The agency’s definition of “downstream” activities appears not to include the moment when gas is delivered to a customer and used as directed. Earlier this year, an associate professor of civil engineering at McGill University told The Energy Mix those end use emissions could themselves account for 80% of the life cycle emissions from natural gas.

Like other reports before it, the IEA tracker says cutting fossil fuel emissions “offers some of the fastest, largest, and cheapest ways to reduce methane.”