The Rise of Responsibly Sourced Gas

Digital Innovations in Oil and Gas with Geoffrey Cann

Markets are starting to show interest in commodity products that are produced more responsibly, notably natural gas. The key is to be able to prove it, and that requires some changes. Customers and markets are starting to demand evidence that energy products such as natural gas are making a positive contribution to buyers’ emission reduction goals. Responsibly sourced gas will experience demand growth, rewarding gas producers for their efforts at reducing emissions in the industry.

Digital innovations have unlocked many businesses’ ability to offer variations of tracking and tracing services. Tracking is by far the easier of the two, and Apple, as one example, has created its AirTag product to exploit this opportunity. AirTags connect up with passing iPhones and relay their coordinates via the cloud to the AirTag owner, pinpointing the tag’s location.

Tracing is decidedly more difficult as it requires a date, time, and location log of the events, changes of state, and changes in ownership of the item that is being traced. There are few examples of full item tracing in industry for this reason. Tracing is doubly hard for commodities that are fungible (how dto you tell one organic tomato from another), or blended with other similar products (such as green energy).

Tracing of energy is coming to the commodity industry as market participants express greater interest in energy provenance.