Methane emissions in the North Sea Symposium 13 & 14 November 2025 | Utrecht - Railway Museum

Methane emissions are receiving increasing attention due to their environmental impact and the recent 2024 European Methane Regulation. To promote collaboration and knowledge exchange, TNO, NIOZ and SodM organized an international symposium bringing together global specialists amongst others from Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom and the USA. The symposium focused on methane emissions from the  seabed, both from natural and anthropogenic sources (abandoned wells), on the fate of this methane and on the quantification of fluxes.
Offshore oil and gas infrastructure, including abandoned wells, may be a significant source of emissions. The EU Methane Regulation requires Member States to map and monitor inactive wells, develop mitigations plans and implement measures to reduce methane emissions. Understanding how to measure it, and how to effectively mitigate it is crucial for all stakeholders.
The Methane Regulation makes this symposium hence both timely and relevant and it is therefore expected to attract considerable attention from industry, scientists, policy makers and the media. The symposium brought together and provided an overview of all the relevant knowledge on the origin and the fate of methane, how to measure methane fluxes, and how leakage from wells can occur and even may be repaired again, and how to reduce methane emissions.
 

Program of the symposium

Welcome by Theodor Kockelkoren (Inspector General at State Supervision of Mines (SodM))