With help from Anthony Adragna and Ben Lefebvre

Welcome to the final edition of the Inside Report on the World Gas Conference. I’m Matt Daily, energy editor at POLITICO Pro, and don’t let those good gas tips die on the vine. Send them to me at [email protected], or hit me up on Twitter at @dailym1.

METHANE WIN-WIN? Methane emissions have been a major topic at the conference this week, with some participants warning that natural gas risks losing its image as a more climate-friendly fuel if the industry can’t get a handle on them. While most of the industry speakers saw the “fugitive emissions” problem as one that can be solved — and others saw a business opportunity (see photo below) — EPA air chief Bill Wehrum said he was content to let the industry address the issue without rules from Washington.

Wehrum, whose agency is rolling back the Obama administration’s emissions mandates, sang the praises of voluntary agency programs for companies to curb methane pollution. “These programs are some of the best of what government can do,” he said. “This is a perfect opportunity to bring together real mutual interest and achieve real mutual beneficial goals.”

Those initiatives include the Natural Gas STAR Program and Methane Challenge Program, which he said represented EPA using its power of “convergence” to ensure emissions reductions while benefiting businesses by capturing more of their product to sell to the market.

Companies touted their commitments to greenhouse gas reductions and the significant progress they’ve already made in reducing methane emissions. “We really need to [be] proud of what we’re doing, and we need to continue on that path,” said Melissa Adams, chief corporate social responsibility officer at utility group WGL Holdings.

“A voluntary approach right now, we believe, is the right way to go,” added Richard Hyde, director of external affairs with Southern Co. Gas. “We consider this a huge responsibility to be leaders in doing this.”

Not stuck in their ways: Wehrum also said EPA is making it a “priority” to ensure rapid technology developments are factored into both its regulatory and voluntary programs. “We have been moving in the direction of exploring, understanding and ultimately deploying the technology in our regulatory programs,” he said. “We shouldn’t get stuck with older technologies that aren’t as useful, not as efficient and maybe not as good.” He said he thought the agency was doing a “pretty good job” of incorporation but could do “even better.”

AT THE WELLHEAD

DRILLING DOWN ON GAS COSTS: The U.S. shale revolution may have shaken up the world’s gas markets, but cutting the costs of getting gas out of the ground and to market is getting harder because most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked. The “brute force” cost cuts from drilling longer and longer lateral wells into shale rock and fracking with ever-greater volumes of water may be coming to an end — and the industry is turning to technology to wring out new savings.

Oil and gas company EQT, which produces nearly 5 percent of all the gas output in the U.S., mostly from its Marcellus Shale operations in southwest Pennsylvania, has cut its drilling and completion costs by 44 percent over the past five years, and it expects maybe another 15 percent can be gleaned at the well sites. That has prompted the company to look for process and technology advances to eke out more savings.

“We now have more demand for Six Sigma-type people than we do geologists,” EQT CFO Rob McNally told an audience this morning, referring to the data-driven management system that’s designed to increase efficiency.

The company used to staff its 10 rigs with about 70 people — until it set up a data center in Pittsburgh six months ago to crunch the real-time digital information flowing back from its wells. Now the company operates those rigs with about 20 people, and the rest of them now direct operations from the data hub, McNally said.

Oil field services company Baker Hughes is a bit more optimistic about cost reductions. The company (which GE is planning to sell off only a year after buying it) expects the “brute force” actions can generate 30 percent more savings, and that digitization and automation of processes can yield another 15-20 percent. “I still think there’s a 50 percent improvement in the conventional way we do business today,” Richard Ward, the company’s VP for strategy and marketing, told the crowd.

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WORLD OF GAS

EYE IN THE SKY: In case the gas industry thinks it’s got the market cornered on technology, Environmental Defense Fund chief Fred Krupp reminded the panel that the group was working to launch its own satellite — called MethaneSAT — to track methane leaks. The group, which unveiled the project in April, expects to announce a contract to build the satellite in August, and plans to have it in orbit within three years.

“What this will mean is we’re going to be able to take a look at every major oil and gas facility on the planet more than once a week and detect how much is coming out regularly in terms of methane,” he told the panel. “And all that data will be free and available to the public. I think this will reward those companies that are producing cleanly and not so much that have challenges.”

EDF released a study last week that said emissions of methane, a far more potent but shorter-lived greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, were 60 percent higher than EPA had previously estimated.

EPA withholding judgment: Wehrum said EPA is “digesting” that study published in Science last week, adding that the agency hasn’t “made any judgment” yet.

“It’s good that groups are out making an independent assessment of emissions,” he said, cautioning that EPA would take a “hard look” at whether the study was done correctly. He declined to comment on a lawsuit filed earlier this year against the agency for not regulating methane from existing oil and gas wells.

ABOUT THAT EPA CLIMATE DEBATE: EPA isn’t planning to move forward with Administrator Scott Pruitt’s earlier proposal for a “red team-blue team” climate science debate, Wehrum told reporters at the conference, but the agency is trying to figure out how it can provide a platform to hear dissenting views on the issue.

“We’re not doing red team-blue team right now, but we’re still talking about ways we can provide a platform for people to express a spectrum of views on climate issues,” he told reporters. “So stay tuned.”

Emails from earlier this year showed Pruitt pushed multiple times to get the climate science debate off the ground last year before it was eventually scrapped due to White House opposition.