Can Blockchain Finally Bring Order to the Chaos of Oil and Gas Emissions Tracking?

Imagine trying to balance up to 60 different checkbooks at once. That’s essentially the challenge facing North American energy companies as they grapple with a patchwork of emissions accounting standards—from OGCI’s methane targets to MiQ’s gas certifications.

Fortunately, blockchain ledger technology finally offers a way to turn this seeming Tower of Babel into a common and discernible language and business logic.  

A Mosaic of Emissions Intensity Standards 

The oil and gas sector’s climate math suffers from an existential problem — no generally accepted accounting standards or agreed-upon calculator exists. There are several standards frameworks all competing with each other to be “The One."

• The Contenders: Over 60 frameworks compete, including the EPA-aligned ONE Future (focused on methane leaks), MiQ (which grades the emissions intensity of gas like beef or eggs), and the product-level ISO 14067 (for quantifying a product’s carbon footprint).  
• The Core Conflict: While most use the IPCC’s AR5-100 GWP—the metric for comparing greenhouse gas impacts—they all clash on the scope of formula boundaries. MiQ tracks emissions per facility; ISO 14067 uses a full lifecycle approach (raw materials to disposal); others, like NGSI, use pipeline segments.  

“It’s like measuring a building’s height in stories, meters, and feet simultaneously,” noted a 2023 Columbia University report on sustainable investment.

A Digital Fix for a Physical Problem  

Enter EarnDLT’s Quantified Emissions Token® (QETs)—blockchain-based validated “nutrition labels” that act and function as universal translators of information. QETs can calculate and convert gas and emissions data into whatever supply chain Emissions Intensity Standard is necessary. 

Here’s how they work:  

1. The Tokenization  

A natural gas producer in Texas, for example, feeds emissions data—methane leaks measured by onsite sensors, processing energy use, transport impacts—into a digital “recipe” combining the EPA’s GREET model and AR5-100 conversions. Out pops a QET: a cryptographically-sealed record of the CO₂e emissions and/or base emissions intensity data.  

Key Flexibility: QETs’ standardized data schema allows producers to input emissions calculated under any major framework—whether One Future, ISO 14067’s lifecycle analysis, OGMP 2.0, OGCI’s methane intensity metric, MiQ, or ISO 14064-1’s organizational reporting. The QET’s schema normalizes these inputs into a universal format, ensuring apples-to-apples comparability.  

2. The Validation  

Third-party auditors like SCS Global can next verify the data using the QET, triggering a smart contract that stamps the token as compliant with ISO 14064-3, the global benchmark for GHG verification.  

3. The Trade  

Downstream buyers of the physical gas (e.g., chemical plants, utilities) can purchase these QET tokens to account for and/or measure the reductions in their supply chain footprints by buying gas from sellers with lower emissions intensity. Each transaction is paired with the gas sales, and the end user can permanently retire the token on a blockchain ledger, preventing double-counting.  

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Why This Matters Now  

Three seismic shifts are forcing the industry’s hand:  

1. Regulatory Tsunami  

The EU’s carbon border tax (CBAM) and the SEC’s climate disclosure rules demand audit-proof data—precisely what QETs provide.  

2. The Investor Revolt  

Firms like BlackRock now grade companies on emissions transparency. A Sustainalytics study found facilities using systems like QETs saw ESG financing costs drop.  

3. Interoperability Breakthrough  

QETs’ schema bridges previously siloed frameworks. For example:  

• Product-Level (ISO 14067): Tokenizes lifecycle emissions for LNG shipments, from fracking to tanker fuel.  
• Methane-First (MiQ): Converts facility-level leaks into CO₂e using AR5-100.
• Organizational (ISO 14064-1): Aggregates corporate emissions for annual reports.  

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The Bottom Line  

The oil and gas industry’s carbon emissions accounting dilemma has long seemed overly complex, subjective, and detached from core operations. By digitizing CO₂e emissions into tradeable, tamper-proof tokens aligned with global standards, blockchain ledger technology isn’t just offering a new data management tool—it’s enabling a new networked accounting system and ruleset to emerge that eliminates the noise of discordant standards and renders emissions reporting data interoperable across the supply chain. QETs’ standardized schema turns fragmentation into flexibility, allowing companies to meet MiQ, ISO 14067, or SEC demands without reinventing the wheel.  

As regulators finalize climate disclosure rules this fall, technologies like QETs could shift from nice-to-have to non-negotiable.  

In this high-stakes game, the prize isn’t just compliance—it’s credibility.

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References  

1. ISO 14067:2018 (Carbon Footprint of Products) 

2. ISO 14064-3:2019 (Verification Standard)

3. IPCC AR5 Report

4. EPA GHGRP for Oil & Gas 

5. EarnDLT QET Technology  

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