Methane Hunting in Romania

Vineyards and oil production above Ploiești

The first was the simultaneous embeddedness and diversity of oil and gas facilities and methane emissions, across the many sites that we visited. We slept at a beautiful hotel in the foothills overlooking Ploiești, where Fidel Castro had once stayed whilst negotiating access to Romanian oil supplies. The area’s hillsides were covered with vineyards, and with a profusion of summer butterflies and wildflowers: roses, vetches, bedstraws, thyme, vipers bugloss, and more. But scattered amongst this beauty were scores of oil and gas wells, old and new, all with their associated gathering lines, separator tanks, storage tanks, valves and vent stacks.

Elsewhere, the geography of oil production was very different. We surveyed forests, driving up logging roads to find oil wells poking out of the trees. We visited urban areas, where oil facilities were just a stone’s throw away from houses or places of worship. We found everything from tiny, unprotected abandoned wells to major new facilities. We found cases of large-scale methane venting alongside scores of much smaller vents and leaks. And we saw just a tiny portion of the estimated 60,000–70,000 oil and gas wells that are found across Romania. Methane emissions abatement, it became apparent, involves tackling and before that understanding this incredible heterogeneity.

Oil wells in the town of Băicoi near Ploiești, with its church behind

Tagging leaks under the EUMR, this one measured at 264,000 parts per million methane

Second and more important, we found clear evidence that methane regulation can work. The EU’s 2024 Methane Regulation sets strict standards for leak detection and repair, flaring and venting, equipment, and more, and the fieldtrip provided opportunity to see and document its impacts. These were evident, first, in the form of yellow tags showing facilities where methane leaks had been identified by oil company engineers. But more than this was the evidence from the odd facility that we found that had been upgraded and modernised since Mihai and Theo last visited them – that is, since the EUMR came into effect. ‘This is the EUMR in action’, said Theo on several occasions.

The pattern was of course mixed. Many facilities showed no sign of attention at all. Many sparkling new storage and separator tanks had their hatches open, and were simply venting out gas as a matter of course. In other places, work done to patch up leaks was just moving the leaks to elsewhere from the same facility. Beyond this, the bigger picture is that Romania has still not legislated for a ‘competent authority’ to enforce the EUMR, as the Regulation requires. Yet for all this, there were clear signs of progress.

In turn issues of visibility seem to explain a lot about the pattern of methane emissions that we found. In vineyards and other accessible locations, the facilities were mostly well-kept and presented, with relatively small leaks. A site where Mihai and Theo had previously taken journalists had been thoroughly upgraded, with none of its five wells emitting methane at all. By contrast, deep in the forest we found few signs of the EUMR in action, and instead a profusion of rusted-up tanks and broken, venting pipes. Perhaps this is what one should expect for a problem that, before anything else is done, has to be rendered visible. But if so, then what are the chances for transformative methane abatement, especially when an Optical Gas Imaging (OGI) camera can cost $100,000, and when operating it requires technical experience and expertise?

Significant venting from an open vent stack near 
Ploiești, 17 June 2026. OGI image by Theo Humann-Guilleminot