Europe's gas market is under particular strain. The Strait of Hormuz is disrupted, Asian buyers are competing for the same cargoes, and the European benchmark is around €74 per MWh, its highest since 2023.
Industry is using these tensions to press for a three-year delay to the EU Methane Regulation, and it is being heard. On Tuesday Commissioner Jørgensen told journalists that the Commission had listened to member states' calls for more flexibility and that methane is "one of" the areas it is looking at. Reuters has reported that the Commission will propose a postponement.
The rule industry wants postponed is aimed at gas that leaks, is vented, or is burned off, all of which is saleable gas being lost. The International Energy Agency puts the volume that could be captured and sold at around 200 billion cubic metres a year. A requirement on producers to find and stop those losses adds gas to the market over time. Postponing the rule postpones that.
That gas will not come back on its own. Dr Lena Höglund-Isaksson of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, co-author of the prices briefing, said:
"A profit-maximising oil and gas company puts its capital where the marginal profit is highest. With production margins often in the range of 60 to 100%, those will almost always outcompete the returns from methane abatement, particularly when prices are high. If you want a fee to change that, it has to be set high enough that abatement wins, and I have not yet seen a proposal at those levels."
In other words, the high prices now being used to argue for delay are exactly the conditions in which companies will not act without a binding rule.
What the rule asks for in January is narrower than the debate suggests. Importers have to show that the gas they buy comes from producers whose methane is measured, reported and verified to a standard equivalent to the EU's. A briefing published today by the Climate Crisis Advisory Group puts the cost of meeting that standard at about €0.07 per MMBtu, or 0.3% of the current gas price, based on modelling by Rystad Energy for the Clean Air Task Force. Across the 76 billion cubic metres of American gas the EU bought last year that comes to roughly €190 million. If every cent were passed through to consumers it would add around €3 a year to a typical household gas bill. Sending a US cargo to Asia rather than Europe costs $3.50 per MMBtu more in shipping alone.
Nor is the compliant gas missing. Rystad Energy, working for the Environmental Defense Fund, found in June that gas already reported at the measurement standard the Regulation names runs to more than three times what the EU imports.
The other pillar of the case for delay is the claim that enforcing the regulation from January 2027 would put 43% of the EU's gas imports, 114 billion cubic metres, at risk. That is more gas than Qatar exports in an entire year.
The number comes from a single study, written by Wood Mackenzie for the upstream lobby IOGP Europe and the refiners' research body Concawe, published on 9 March. It reaches the figure by assuming that member states will fine importers hard enough to keep non-compliant cargoes out of Europe. On 20 July the Commission asked member states not to issue those fines for reporting failures in 2027, 2028 or 2029. The letter from IOGP Europe and twenty other trade associations on 31 August still cites the 43%.
On page 8 the same study describes its results as "illustrative" and says they "should not be viewed as a forecast", adding that its assumptions "carry considerable uncertainty". The Climate Crisis Advisory Group has not found a single instance of those caveats being quoted in the six months since it was published. A second briefing published today sets out the detail.
Energy ministers discussed the file informally in Dublin this week and meet formally on 29 October. CCAG is asking member states not to back a binding postponement of Article 28, and to press the Commission to finish the verification protocol, accredit the verifiers and get the transparency database running.
Sir David King, Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former UK Chief Scientific Adviser, said:
"What we heard from Brussels this week worries me. The Commission is now talking about 'flexibility' on methane, and I'm afraid that looks very much like the groundwork for delay.
The argument for it is that these rules will push up the price of gas. They won't. Showing how the gas you import is measured costs a tiny fraction of what that gas sells for, and even if every penny of it were passed on, households would barely notice. The rules also bring gas back onto the market that is at present simply leaking into the air.
Methane is the quickest brake we have on warming this decade. Before ministers agree to ease off it, I'd ask them to look very carefully at what it actually costs."
Notes
- The EU Methane Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1787, has applied to EU producers since 2024. Article 28 extends monitoring, reporting and verification requirements to importers from 1 January 2027. Contracts concluded before 4 August 2024 require "all reasonable efforts". The methane intensity limit under Article 29 applies from 5 August 2030 and its maximum values have not been set.
- Commissioner Jørgensen's remarks were made at a press conference with the Irish Presidency on 29 September 2026 (from 26:35 in the recording).
- Wood Mackenzie Consulting, EU Methane Emissions Regulation - Analysis of Market Impacts, prepared for IOGP Europe and Concawe, March 2026.
- Commission Recommendation (EU) 2026/1835 of 20 July 2026 asks member states not to apply penalties for importers' information failures for obligations due in 2027, 2028 and 2029, fraudulent breaches excepted, with a review by 1 January 2028.
- The household figure assumes annual gas use of 12,000 kWh, or 41 MMBtu, and full pass through of the compliance cost.
