A rapidly expanding certification scheme run by a UK nonprofit and used by major gas companies may be understating the actual methane emissions it purports to certify, a Guardian investigation has found.
BP, ExxonMobil and EQT are among the producers that have turned to London-based MiQ to demonstrate that their US-produced natural gas complies with the European Union Methane Regulation, or EUMR, which aims to curb energy-related emissions.
The findings raise questions about whether third-party certification schemes can credibly demonstrate exporters’ compliance with the bloc’s new methane rules, an approach championed by the gas industry and now supported by the European Commission.
MiQ runs the largest voluntary methane certification programme globally, covering about a fifth of US natural gas production and 7% globally. It maintains that its framework is specifically designed to comply with the EU methane regulation.
The EUMR, in force since August 2024, requires energy firms to monitor, report and verify methane emissions at their drilling sites and conduct regular leak detection surveys. It will also require importers to obtain methane-intensity data from their suppliers starting next year. Penalties for non-compliance include fines and other enforcement measures.
Industry groups that have been lobbying for voluntary certification to suffice for compliance are now lobbying to pause implementation of the EUMR for imported gas altogether amid the US-Israel war in Iran and resultant destabilisation of the energy markets.
For US companies, the stakes are high. American producers now supply 60% of Europe’s LNG, a share that is likely to grow as the EU clamps down on Russian gas imports.
‘Terrible pollution’
MiQ grades gas production facilities based on methane intensity – the ratio of methane emissions to total gas produced – and assigns ratings from A to F. Certification lasts a year and must be renewed annually. MiQ has certified 32 facilities worldwide to date, most of which are in the US.
In July 2025 investigative group Gas Outlook travelled with Oilfield Witness, an environmental monitoring group, to 10 MiQ-certified sites across the Permian Basin, the country’s largest oil and gas field, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico border.
Using optical gas imaging cameras that detect methane invisible to the naked eye, they documented what Tim Doty, a former air quality inspector at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who reviewed the footage, described as “huge emissions” at multiple sites.
At BP’s State Ella Mae Hall gas well, images showed an unlit flare that appeared to be malfunctioning, “acting as a vent pipe rather than a combustion device”, Doty said.
Further south, the camera picked up “significant emissions” that Doty said were generated by flaring and maintenance issues at the BP-operated Gretchen Northrup well.
BP says on its website that all its onshore upstream operations in the US are certified under MiQ. The company does not disclose individual ratings, but available information suggests these sites received grades from A to C, implying leakage rates below 0.2% of production.
BP did not reply to requests for comment.
For Gunnar Schade, an atmospheric chemist at Texas A&M University, the process of flaring gas alone makes it exceedingly difficult to limit methane emissions. “All ‘candlestick’ flares release some methane,” he said.
While lower intensity gas is possible in some basins, in the oil-rich Permian flaring is rampant.
A February 2026 report from MethaneSAT, a methane-monitoring satellite launched by Environmental Defense Fund and Harvard in 2024, found emissions in the Permian Basin from May 2024 to June 2025 to be four times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency’s official estimates, which are largely based on operator-reported emissions.
Researchers estimate average methane emissions across the basin range between 2.4-4% of production, among the highest worldwide and exponentially higher than even a C grade from MiQ.
Similar patterns emerged across the border in New Mexico, where methane was observed leaking from tanks, inefficient flares and faulty equipment at ExxonMobil’s Poker Lake complex, which has held an A rating from MiQ since 2022. At one location, a pressure relief valve was emitting uncombusted gas.
“Given the scale of this challenge, scrutiny in this area is essential,” Georges Tijbosch, chief executive of MiQ, said. “However, it is scientifically impossible to conclude that these plumes are unreported methane emissions.”
DataDesk, an oil and gas investigative consultancy, cross-referenced satellite and aerial data from third-party datasets with the coordinates of the visited sites, uncovering additional methane plumes.
Aerial surveys conducted by the Global Airborne Observatory in 2024 detected three “super-emitter” events, rare but extremely large methane releases often caused by equipment failures and responsible for a hefty share of total emissions, at the Poker Lake complex.
The gas site produced more than 100 million cubic feet of gas between 2024 and 2025. ExxonMobil reported no venting or flaring in regulatory filings with the state of New Mexico over the same period.
Exxon did not reply to requests for comment.
After leaving the well pad, gas often travels just a short distance, sometimes less than 50 metres, to a nearby processing facility that is neither certified nor covered by the EU methane regulation, even though they can generate emissions that can rival those from well sites.
Auditing operator-provided data
To earn MiQ certification, operators are evaluated on three main criteria: a site’s methane intensity; the procedures in place to prevent leaks; and the monitoring technologies deployed. Third-party auditors visit facilities to review these factors before recommending a grade, after which MiQ issues certificates that can be attached to gas sold on the market.
Audits take place annually, with advance notice, although MiQ notes that auditors do not necessarily disclose which specific sites they will visit, and do not involve auditors carrying out independent emissions measurements on site.
“As part of the certification process, auditors do not calculate emissions,” said Elizabeth McGurk, methane sector leader at Montrose Environmental, one of MiQ’s audit firms.
Instead, she said, auditors “review and verify the operator’s emissions inventory” – an estimate of the total methane emissions from a facility over a year – assessing whether “intermittent emissions are properly accounted for through personnel interviews, documentation and evaluation of supporting calculations”.
Auditors, added McGurk, “specifically ask how operators are tracking and responding to intermittent events – both to mitigate emissions and to ensure they are accurately represented in the annual inventory.”
MiQ maintains it requires operators to report on a broader set of emission sources than many regulatory frameworks.
However, an analysis of its standard shows it does not mandate direct measurement or the use of specific third-party datasets nor does it require measurements to be independently collected, although some operators choose to incorporate these tools into their emissions inventories.
MiQ noted that while direct measurement of methane emissions is not required for certification, auditors will ask to review raw operator data on an as-needed basis.
Dan Zimmerle, director of Colorado State University’s methane emissions programme, said that because emissions occur around the clock and continuous monitoring is costly and technically challenging, measurements capture only a “snapshot”, with the rest inferred through “statistical extrapolation”.
However, verifying the data remains a challenge. “The big issue with certification schemes like this is: how does the verifier actually know what was done?” Zimmerle said.
Most energy companies don’t measure their actual methane emissions. Instead, they produce estimates based on how much methane they say typically escapes from their equipment using a combination of short-duration measurements, engineering calculations and statistical methods.
Scientists have found that those estimates are often inaccurate. Using satellite observations and aerial surveys, multiple peer-reviewed studies have consistently concluded that nations and companies emit significantly more methane than they report.
In a January study, Kevin Kircher, an energy researcher at Purdue University, compared US government estimates of LNG-related methane emissions largely based on self-reported facility data with satellite-based measurements.
His analysis found that emissions linked to the rapid expansion of shale oil and gas production in the Permian Basin have risen well above official estimates over the past two decades.
“There’s actually a pretty stark difference between what companies self-report and what’s there when you actually show up and look at it,” he said.
A March report by RMI, one of MiQ’s founders, also found that data submitted by operators to the Railroad Commission of Texas vastly understated methane emissions, with actual gas waste in 2024 estimated at three to four-and-a-half times reported levels.
‘Copying homework’
MiQ certificates can also be “decoupled” from the facilities that generated them and traded to other producers as a way to offset emissions. Certificates are sold through platforms such as the CG Hub marketplace, where companies can buy them and attach them to gas with significantly higher emissions.
EU officials have repeatedly voiced concern over whether schemes allowing decoupling credits from physical entities can credibly reflect real emissions reductions.
Jutta Paulus, an MEP on the EU’s committee on environment and climate who helped design the EUMR, said MiQ’s trading rules may not be “totally compliant with the regulation” because certificates should only be sold with the gas it has certified.
MiQ strategic adviser Axel Scheuer told EU commissioners last April that “transfers from one region to another are controlled and limited to volumes actually exported and imported between those regions,” he said. “This means an importer bringing in gas from, for example, Nigeria cannot use certificates linked to US production.”
However, certificates can be traded between operators within the same country. In the US, where gas from multiple producers is routinely mixed in pipelines, it is often impossible to determine whether “certified” gas actually comes from lower-emission facilities.
Trading in such certificates is already picking up. In February, British energy trader Centrica Energy signed a 10-year agreement to buy certificates linked to natural gas produced by Seneca Resources in the US, whose natural gas production has held an A rating from MiQ since 2022. The deal does not include the delivery of physical gas.
A month later, a European energy supplier and a US integrated energy company completed what was described as the first trade of certified methane emissions reductions on the Xpansiv CBL spot exchange, with emissions verified under the MiQ standard.
Brandon Locke, a researcher at the Boston-based environmental organisation Clean Air Task Force, said decoupling can discourage gas producers from pursuing the operational changes needed to curb methane emissions. “Companies can effectively ‘copy someone else’s homework’ rather than clean up their act,” he said.
Unlike many other offsetting certifiers, MiQ does not maintain an open database, with information on buyers of its certificates available only to operators and traders.
When reporters requested access to trading data, they were offered a demonstration but not direct access.
‘Pragmatic compliance tool’
As the EU finalises its new methane requirements, the lobbying battle around certification is intensifying, with gas producers pushing for voluntary certification and EU commissioners under increasing pressure to allow it as gas supply is constrained by the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
The American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobby coalition, announced earlier this year that one of its 2026 goals is to “ensure” EU methane laws do not “disadvantage US producers”. In January, another lobby group, FuelsEurope, pressed the EU to accept “certificates transferred independently from the underlying commodity”.
The Partnership to Address Global Emissions, a trade group founded by EQT and representing US gas exporters to Europe, has also lobbied for certification as a way to increase US LNG exports to Europe without running afoul of European climate policies. Ben Webster, director of policy for MiQ, sits on the trade group’s advisory board, though MiQ stresses its independence from industry.
Documents obtained through freedom of information requests also show MiQ hired the lobbying firm Energy & Climate Policy Advisory Europe to promote its certification framework in Brussels. The firm is led by Scheuer, a former lobbyist for ExxonMobil and the IOGP.
According to the records, Scheuer has pitched MiQ certification to EU lawmakers as a “pragmatic compliance tool” and held meetings with officials overseeing imported energy rules.
In January, Scheuer presented the certification scheme at a workshop organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, describing MiQ’s standards as “largely equivalent to the EU methane regulation requirements”.
These efforts appear to be gaining traction. In December, the European Council endorsed third-party certification as a way to support implementation of the bloc’s methane regulation, a stance the European Commission echoed earlier this year.
Tijbosch views certification as progress. “Reducing methane emissions from oil and gas is one of the fastest, most cost-effective ways to slow climate change,” he said. And the technology exists today to achieve reductions, he added. “This means the challenge is not about capability, but accountability.”
For Kircher and many other climate experts, low-emissions gas certification only has credibility if measurement and reporting are “done by someone independent and neutral, not by the companies themselves”.
“I’m not sure who that might be, but it has to be someone with no skin in the game and nothing to gain from lowball estimates,” he said.
Jess Staufenberg contributed additional reporting to this piece. The investigation was supported by Journalismfund Europe and Gas Outlook.
