Gayathri Vaidyanathan, E&E reporter, reports that emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry vastly exceed federal government estimates, according to a definitive study published yesterday. The study finds that daily leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from oil and gas wells in Texas Barnett Shale matched the annual emissions of 8,000 cars.
Meanwhile, in the California Aliso Canyon, a natural gas storage site has leaked at least 800,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalents of methane since Oct. 23, 2015, equal to the annual emissions from 168,421 cars. The size of this leak has been compared to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil well accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Sempra Energy and Southern California Gas Co., which operate the site, have said that it could take up to four months to drill an intercepting well and plug the leak.
The leaks of methane, the primary component of natural gas, are bad news for the climate. Methane is 86 times as warming as carbon dioxide on a 20-year time scale, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The leak in the Barnett means that a Texan who uses natural gas would have a 50% greater climate impact over the next 20 years than a consumer elsewhere, said Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF, a commercial adversary of oil and gas) and a co-author of the study.
The leaks from the oil and gas industry, which is the second-largest industrial emitter, have prompted calls for greater regulation. In August, U.S. EPA proposed rules that, together with existing regulations, would curb emissions by 20 to 30% below 2012 levels by 2025 (ClimateWire, Aug. 19). The rules would apply only to new sources of emissions, but the agency will consider whether to regulate existing sources, as well.
This has emerged as the flashpoint in the tussle between industry and green (aka adversarial) groups, with EPA in the middle.
See: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/03/1522126112.abstract
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