Apparently, it isn’t just the Arctic that has a ticking methane bomb, there’s actually explosive levels in Washington D.C. recorded. From Duke University and the “there must be a joke in here somewhere department”:
5,900 natural gas leaks discovered under Washington, D.C.
A dozen locations had concentrations high enough to trigger explosion
DURHAM, NC – More than 5,893 leaks from aging natural gas pipelines have been found under the streets of Washington, D.C. by a research team from Duke University and Boston University.
A dozen of the leaks could have posed explosion risks, the researchers said. Some manholes had methane concentrations as high as 500,000 parts per million of natural gas – about 10 times greater than the threshold at which explosions can occur.
Four months after phoning in the leaks to city authorities, the research team returned and found that nine were still emitting dangerous levels of methane. “Finding the leaks a second time, four months after we first reported them, was really surprising,” said Robert B. Jackson, a professor of environmental sciences at Duke who led the study.
The researchers published their findings this week in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
“Repairing these leaks will improve air quality, increase consumer health and safety, and save money,” Jackson said. “Pipeline safety has been improving over the last two decades. Now is the time to make it even better.”
Nationally, natural gas pipeline failures cause an average of 17 fatalities, 68 injuries, and $133 million in property damage annually, according to the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
In addition to the explosion hazard, natural gas leaks also pose another threat: Methane, the primary ingredient of natural gas, is a powerful greenhouse gas that also can catalyze ozone formation. Pipeline leaks are the largest human-caused source of methane in the United States and contribute to $3 billion of lost and unaccounted for natural gas each year.
Jackson’s team collaborated with researchers from Boston University and Gas Safety, Inc., on the new study. The team mapped gas leaks under all 1,500 road miles within Washington using a high-precision Picarro G2301 Cavity Ring-Down Spectrometer installed in a GPS-equipped car. Laboratory analyses then confirmed that the isotopic chemical signatures of the methane and ethane found in the survey closely matched that of pipeline gas.
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  IMAGE: This is a satellite image of the District of Colombia with bar charts showing where natural gas leaks were located under city streets and in what concentration methane was identified….Click here for more information. |
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The average methane concentration observed in the leaks was about 2.5 times higher than in background air samples collected in the city. Methane levels in some leaks were as high as 89 parts per million, about 45 times higher than normal background levels.
The team also measured how much methane was coming from four individual street-level leaks. “Methane emissions from these four leaks ranged from 9,200 to 38,200 liters per day for each leak — that’s comparable to the amount of natural gas used by between 2 and 7 homes,” said Duke Ph.D. student Adrian Down.
Last year, the team mapped more than 3,300 natural-gas pipeline leaks beneath 785 road miles in the city of Boston. “The average density of leaks we mapped in the two cities is comparable, but the average methane concentrations are higher in Washington,” said Nathan G. Phillips, a professor at Boston University’s Department of Earth and Environment.
Like Washington and Boston, many U.S. cities have aging pipeline infrastructure that may be prone to leaks. The researchers recommend coordinated gas-leak mapping campaigns in cities where the infrastructure is deemed to be at risk.
The new study comes at a time when the nation’s aging pipeline infrastructure is generating increased legislative attention. Last November, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced two new bills to speed up the replacement of natural gas pipelines in states with older infrastructures by offering new federal programs and incentives to help defray the costs associated with the repairs.
“We need to put the right financial incentives in place,” said Jackson. “Companies and public utility commissions need help to fix leaks and replace old cast iron pipes more quickly.”
Co-authoring the new study with Jackson, Down and Phillips were Charles W. Cook and Kaiguang Zhao, of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment; Robert C. Ackley of Gas Safety, Inc.; and Desiree L. Plata of Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Funding came from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke Center on Global Change.
CITATION: “Natural Gas Pipeline Leaks Across Washington, D.C.,” Robert B. Jackson, Adrian Down, Nathan G. Phillips, Robert C. Ackley, Charles W. Cook, Desiree L. Plata and Kaiguang Zhao. Environmental Science & Technology, January 16, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es404474x.
This may be relevant: A Pragmatic Approach For Addressing The Issue Of Odorant Fade
_Jim says: @ur momisugly January 17, 2014 at 6:31 am
Whether the mercaptan makes it out of the pipe might depend on the size of the area the gas is supposedly leaking from but I am certain gas companies have methods for detecting whether the methane is from natural rot or from them. It would cost them too much to chase non-existent leaks otherwise.
_Jim:
I am not sure about the point you are making in your post addressed to me at January 17, 2014 at 6:31 am and your subsequent post ()with its useful link) at January 17, 2014 at 6:43 am.
I do not dispute the possibility of several possible sources of the methane other than pipeline leaks. Indeed, I was the first in this thread to suggest another such source.
And I agree that the odorant fades, and I ALWAYS agree that one should be sceptical of everything. And that is why I said “may” in my statement to Gail Combs which you quoted; i.e.
But I repeat my view
Not being sure of what you were saying to me, I may have not answered it. But I have tried to clarify what I have said, and I found your link to be very interesting.
Richard
I remember some 50 years ago, after a meal of baked beans in the canteen, returning to barracks and competing to see who could produce the longest blue flame from an appropriately placed burning match.
richard s courtney
When I commented on the Mercaptan I was thinking of not only detection by Nasal Chromatograph (Human nose) but by thaking a sample of the gas and running it through a GC or whatever. A method that can detect levels below that of the human nose.
As you said, unless the leaks are big enough to be dangerous or big enough to be economical to fix the gas company is not going to bother.
I am sure the actual reason behind this investigation is to provide ammunition against Natural Gas pipelines.
And yest there are the headlines: USA Today – Study finds 5,893 natural gas leaks in Washington, D.C.: As the use of natural gas booms in the United States, scientists are testing for pipeline leaks. They found more than 5,800 leaks under the streets of Washington, D.C., some potentially explosive.
Washington Post – Researchers find nearly 6,000 natural gas leaks in District’s aging pipe system
Another ‘Science’ study for tabloid consumption to “keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety)”
@richardscourtney says:
>Sewers also generate methane by degradation of sewerage. Places in sewers can obtain very high methane concentrations from this cause alone.
davidmhoffer suggests they didn’t try to differentiate, but in fact they did, referring specifically to different isotopes in order to differentiate between leaking pipe gas (which is something we can control) and our rotting biomass or old sedimentary humus going back centuries.
So, there are two risks (gas which is pipe and not) which do seem to be conflated rather cleverly or accidentally.
There is another source of natural gas which would show up as piped gas, and that is natural seeps from below. The ground conditions are such that it is quite easy for natural-natural gas to emerge all the time from beneath the city. I was raised in an area where natural gas seeps are everywhere.
The main mental block people seem to have is the idea that natural gas is from ‘down there in a pocket’ sealed forever. In fact natural gas forms endothermically anywhere below 30 km depth from the heat and pressure and raw materials found there. It seeps up all over the show. Offshore (Easter US) there are huge reserves of natural gas which sometimes burp into the water.
So it would be, as a comparison, good to survey a nearby region where it is know there are no pipelines at all to see how many ‘leaks’ show up.
Oh, and the GHG forcing from that leaking methane is so far below trivial in consequence I assume the reference is put there merely to get brownie points from fanatical referees. Atmospheric methane concentration is microscopic and its effect, trivial.
@Gail Combs
I agree there is some meaningless alarmism in the piece, but that is de rigeur as you know.
My take on the ‘against pipelines’ thing is different. I think it is a statement supporting huge infrastructure investment in the pipeline sector – all those people using gas are not going to give it up. The point is they will insist on really thick pipes and expensive safety measures which raises the cost of gas permanently but benefits the pipeline people financially. In fact the gas pipeline infrastructure is incredibly safe.
One must always consider when hearing about this sort of ‘issue’ is that the nuclear industry in the USA demanded the most ridiculously expensive possible method of concentrating fuel, generating electricity and handling and burying spend fuel elements. The reason was that nuclear power stations using the cheapest and least dangerous methods would create electricity very cheaply. So if people are already willing to pay x for a kWh, why not increase the cost of the station until the people are paying the same amount?
The result, pressurized light water breeder reactors, brings problems home to roost: Fukushima. They are inherently dangerous so they need extremely high cost solutions to ‘contain the risk’.
If the gas industry could get a similar meme going about piped gas, which they know full well no one is going to give up, they can increase the delivered price 5 fold without having to find anything or develop new customers. It is not money for nothing, it is money for something that is not needed. Sounds rather like the CO2 industry.
Are the leaks under office buildings for EPA and NOAA?
Crispin in Waterloo says: ….It is not money for nothing, it is money for something that is not needed….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it is Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy
A comment on the article which addresses Bastiat in light of todays economy.
Bastiat talks of the destruction of “wealth’ that is the window and the Keynesians talk about the increase in employment. From a government’s point of view destruction of property (wealth) that causes more employment to replace the destroyed wealth is good because the government TAXES the flow of money between people (measured as GDP) and not the wealth they have accumulated in durable goods. From a corporate point of view you want built in obsolescence because you make your profit every time an item is replaced so the more the better. It is only the individual and the community as a whole who gets shafted when the window is intentionally broken, something the US government is hellbent on doing to our energy industry.
Also note that GDP is a measure of the number of times money changes hands including all salaries to bureaucrats. It is NOT a measure of the real wealth of a nation.
I want to see an overlay depicting the homes and work places of Washington city officials, US government employees, Senators, Representatives and the White House. I believe there will be strong correlation.
Note the mental dysfunction of equating the “greenhouse effect” of methane w/the potential of a methane explosion….
Two things to relate here:
I heard a report a few years back (forgot source) regarding propane use in Mexico City. A large percentage of households use propane (tanks next to house) for cooking and hot water. The report said only about half of the delivered propane actually is used for the intended purposes–the rest leaks into the air. It seems that when the propane suppliers install the tanks and piping, they intentionally leave fittings loose to create leaks. This allows them to sell more propane and increase their profits.
On another note, I used to work for a large technology consulting company. The company was approached by the American Gas Institute to develop a way to detect corrosion and cracks in underground gas mains. After a year-long research effort, we developed a device to be attached to a “pig” and pulled through gas mains. Using AC magnetic fields and sensitive magnetic detectors, the device could accurately measure pipe wall thickness with a spatial resolution of ~1mm. Cracks and corroded areas showed up very clearly in computer generated plots.
The AGI was very pleased with our results. They approached the gas utility companies to show them the great technology we had developed. The utilities replied “thanks but no thanks.” It seems that they were not interested in detecting faults in gas mains prior to catastrophic failure. That would only make more work for them (replacing mains that close to failure, or had acceptable leak rates). They preferred to address leaking mains only after catastrophic failure, or when the leak rate became so high as to be a hazard.
Needless to say, that was the end of that research project.
@RichardSCourtney
… Repair of gas leaks too small to cause hazard is only warranted if the value of leaked gas is more than the cost of repairing the leaks…
Mr Courtney is quite correct to draw attention to the cost/benefit analysis required when performing any activity. The same principle is, of course, true in many other areas – the distribution of water, for instance.
Water is a critical requirement for life, and should be readily available wherever Man has established habitations. It is processed in a cycle, so can never be used up, and therefore need not be ‘saved’ in any sense. Leaks, for instance, fall straight back into the aquifer, so there is no ‘loss’ of water in any sense.
Nevertheless, it is a standard requirement of green politics that ALL resources be short, and consequently require saving. Water is no different – UK citizens are required to reduce their H2O intake by 30% by an EU directive, and the UK government has enforced this by the simple procedure of not building any new reservoirs. Water is to made scarce and raised in price, so that it can be ‘saved’.
This has caused an interesting problem. You have to artificially ‘raise’ the price of water in order to save it – no one ‘saves’ cheap items. But raising the nominal price of water causes the cost/benefit ratio of pipe repairs to change as well – it becomes ‘economic’ to repair the slightest leak, and water companies are forced to set up ‘rapid-response’ leak repair teams.
Only it isn’t really economic to do this. But that doesn’t matter, because spending money inefficiently in this way bumps the price of water up. Which was what had been ordered to happen in the first place. So everyone is happy. Except the consumers…
Make that ‘everyone who matters’ is happy….
Explosions occur when an air-gas mixture in a confined space is ignited. Why that happens is well known. However in an open atmosphere, there is nothing confining the expanding burning gas mixture, so an explosion cannot occur. So what will happen will be a gas flame, expanding rapidly, according to the quantity of gas in the mix. After the first flame, if it didn’t self extinguish, there is a probability that the flame will settle onto the place of the original gas leakage, and safely burn away, acting like a pilot light. Obviously naked flames are to be avoided in a gas-rich environment. it would be interesting to be told how exactly the quantities of escaping gas were measured. bearing in mind that the leaks will be variously from such things as gaskets, pinholes, cracks, corrosion pittings and so on. However, measuring an accurate gas flow quantity from any of these leakages would be next to impossible.
To Gail Combs
You wrote @6:11 PM:
“I am surprised something hasn’t blown before this. Think lit cigarettes tossed down street drains….”
It has! A number of times in the past 15 or so years, there have been
explosions within the Washington, DC sewers. Largely, the result is
manhole covers flipped into the air like tiddlywinks. See, for example:
http://goodspeedupdate.com/2007/2092
Somebody better start spraying Washington D.C. with chlorox to oxidize that methane, Right Away!!!
High levels of molecular chlorine found in Arctic atmosphere
Posted on January 15, 2014 by Anthony Watts
There’s a theory that seepage of geological sources of methane, subsequently oxidized into CO2 and water, are the main reason Earth still has a wet biosphere. The photodissociation of H2O in the upper atmosphere and subsequent loss of hydrogen to outer space is sufficient over geological time to have dried the planet many times over. Only the replenishment of H2 from methane prevents it.