Letter on Africa: Cutting methane can ease Africa’s energy crunch

The continent has an immediate opportunity to make the most of its energy resources by capturing gas that is currently slipping away

As global gas markets tightened in March, a tanker carrying LNG from Nigeria to France abruptly changed course towards Asia. The diversion was a small but telling signal of a larger reality: supply is constrained, competition is intensifying and every available cargo is being pulled towards the highest bidder. At the same time, vast volumes of African gas are going to waste. Methane that is routinely leaked, flared or vented into the atmosphere across the continent is both wasteful and damaging because methane is a powerful climate pollutant. But methane emissions are also a market failure. Unlike carbon dioxide, methane is not a useless energy byproduct—it is the product. Every tonne emitte