Three years ago, the US and EU launched the Global Methane Pledge at COP26 in Glasgow. It was the first major attempt to tackle this extremely potent greenhouse gas, which has been responsible for an estimated 30% of global warming to date. How much progress have the signatories made towards reaching their 2030 methane-emission reduction targets?

To answer this question, we measured annual methane emissions from 13 large fossil-fuel basins spread across nine major producing countries, including six GMP signatories. The countries were selected according to two main criteria: the size of their production and the availability of high-integrity, reliable data. They include large producers from a wide range of geographies, including North America (the US), the MENA region (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Algeria), Central Asia (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), Sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa) and Australia.