API's Energy Insights Hub provides updated statistics, data visualizations, timely analysis, and in-depth reports on all aspects of the oil and natural gas industry.
API’s Global Industry Services drives safety and efficiency within the oil and gas industry through standards, certifications, assessments, training and more.
API and its members are committed to delivering solutions that address the risks associated with climate change while meeting society’s growing energy needs. Over the past two decades, EPA data show that increasing U.S. oil and natural gas production has coincided with measurable declines in carbon emissions and other pollutants. U.S. leadership demonstrates how innovation, markets, and smart policy can drive meaningful environmental progress, including the shift from coal to natural gas in the power sector.
The U.S. oil and natural gas industry works tirelessly at improving efficiency, lowering the GHG emissions intensity of our own operations, and investing in the low-carbon technologies of the future—such as carbon capture, hydrogen, and lower-carbon fuels. These efforts ensure that affordable, reliable energy can continue to support growth while advancing environmental goals.
API’s Climate Action Framework provides a roadmap for industry leadership: reducing greenhouse gas emissions through industry-led solutions, building on proven U.S. progress, and working constructively with policymakers to expand the deployment of all types of energy that meaningfully reduce lifecycle emissions.
Accurate and transparent data on emissions ensure accountability across the economy and are central to making progress on climate goals. API has long supported standardized reporting platforms that track progress and establish industry best practices. API also continues to support advancing pragmatic lifecycle carbon accounting frameworks that provide a more accurate picture of emissions across the value chain and support credible pathways for reductions.
API Climate Policy Principles
API and its members advocate for government policies that ensure the availability and continued development of affordable, reliable and sustainable energy, including oil and natural gas supplies and products derived from them, to consumers. The following principles will guide API’s perspective on public policies that address the risks of climate change. Sound public policy approaches must be designed to:
Facilitate meaningful GHG emissions reductions and conservation from all sectors of the economy.
Balance economic, environmental and energy security needs.
Promote economy-wide innovation and development of cost-effective technologies to meaningfully reduce GHG emissions.
Optimize solutions by eliminating redundant or contradictory policies.
Support market-based policies to drive innovation.
Maintain the competitive positioning of U.S. businesses in global markets.
Rely upon predictable and economically efficient policy frameworks, such as the use of offsets, that foster competition and utilize economy-wide market forces, to deliver outcomes at the least cost to society.
Ensure that energy producers, manufacturers and suppliers are responsible for their direct emissions.
Recognize and appropriately account for early and/or voluntary actions.
Make the costs and associated climate benefits of any policy fully transparent to the American public.
Continue to advance understanding of global climate change in order to calibrate and adapt future policies appropriately and effectively.
Reducing Methane Emissions
Reducing methane emissions is a top priority for the U.S. oil and natural gas industry. Between 2015 and 2023, U.S. methane emissions from onshore oil and natural gas production fell by 42%, while production increased by 51%. The industry continues to reduce emissions through company actions and collective efforts like The Environmental Partnership, developing new technologies and practices to detect and mitigate methane emissions. API supports cost-effective, direct regulation that achieves methane emissions reductions from new and existing sources.
