High emissions findings undercut the case that gas offers substantial climate advantage over coal
The U.S. oil and gas industry emits 13 million metric tons of the potent greenhouse gas methane from its operations each year, 60 percent more than estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to a new study published today in the journal Science.
Significantly, researchers found most of the emissions came from leaks, equipment malfunctions and other “abnormal” operating conditions. The climate impact of these leaks in 2015 was roughly the same as the climate impact of carbon dioxide emissions from all all U.S. coal-fired power plants operating in 2015, they found.
“This study provides the best estimate to date on the climate impact of oil and gas activity in the United States,” said co-author Jeff Peischl, a CIRES scientist working in NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Division in Boulder, Colorado. “It’s the culmination of 10 years of studies by scientists across the country, many of which were spearheaded by CIRES and NOAA.”
The new paper assessed measurements made at more than 400 well pads in six oil and gas production basins and scores of midstream facilities; measurements from valves, tanks and other equipment; and aerial surveys covering large swaths of the U.S. oil and gas infrastructure. The research was organized by the Environmental Defense Fund and drew on science experts from 16 research institutions including the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Texas Austin.
Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after its release. The new study estimates total US emissions at 2.3 percent of production, enough to erode the potential climate benefit of switching from coal to natural gas over the past 20 years. The methane lost to leakage is worth an estimated $2 billion, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, enough to heat 10 million homes in the U.S.
The assessment does suggest that repairing leaks and addressing other conditions that result in the accidental release of salrable methane could be effective. “Natural gas emissions can, in fact, be significantly reduced if properly monitored,” said co-author Colm Sweeney, an atmospheric scientist in NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division. “Identifying the biggest leakers could substantially reduce emissions that we have measured.”
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Read more from the Environmental Defense Fund at https:/
Anything from the EDF is untrustworthy, in my opinion.
Set the case there’s never evermore precipitation on planet earth then there could be reasoning about
“High emissions findings undercut the case that gas offers substantial climate advantage over coal.”
Hmm,
This efficiency of energy production, as associated with hydraulic fracturing and natural gas is significantly skewing the curve.
If we force the natural gas portion of the industry to spend more money on their initial infrastructure, their replacement, and their monitoring, we can increase the cost of energy production; we can then get back to the fact that the windmills and solar panels are getting cheaper at a relatively increasing rate.
Can we find some useful idiot in the oil industry and convert her, to take the lead on this?
I thought I’d randomly select one of these studies to look at their methods and ascertain their quality. I chose the study estimating methane losses from Weld County, CO., since it is closest to home and I’m most familiar with the geology there.
First off, they took all of their measurements during the month of May when microbial activity is reawakening and going to work decomposing organic matter in the soil. They didn’t bother to take measurements during the winter for comparison.
But even worse, they separated oil and gas operations emissions from other sources by subtracting all known man-made sources, i.e. landfills and agriculture, from the total measurements. That’s right, they literally did not account for or even bother addressing natural methane sources such as decomposing vegetation (in the wettest month of the year ffs) or (just wow, I’m still shaking my head) methane seepage from the Niobrara or Pierre Shale Formations that outcrop on the surface throughout the entire county and are literally natural gas source rock and reservoir rocks produced in the region. There is so much natural gas seeping from these rocks that condensate is produced out of windmills along with freshwater, and I have heard anecdotes of farmers producing enough condensate in their livestock water tanks that they can skim it and run a tractor.
I sort of expected to find a bias in the study, but I didn’t expect to find blatant ignorance of this magnitude.
Here’s a link to the actual paper. It appears to be model based.
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Assessment of methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas supply chain
Methane emissions from the U.S. oil and natural gas supply chain were estimated using ground-based, facility-scale measurements and validated with aircraft observations in areas accounting for ~30% of U.S. gas production. When scaled up nationally, our facility-based estimate of 2015 supply chain emissions is 13 ± 2 Tg/y, equivalent to 2.3% of gross U.S. gas production. This value is ~60% higher than the U.S. EPA inventory estimate, likely because existing inventory methods miss emissions released during abnormal operating conditions. Methane emissions of this magnitude, per unit of natural gas consumed, produce radiative forcing over a 20-year time horizon comparable to the CO2 from natural gas combustion. Significant emission reductions are feasible through rapid detection of the root causes of high emissions and deployment of less failure-prone systems.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/06/20/science.aar7204.full
“Natural gas emissions can, in fact, be significantly reduced if properly monitored.”
Well, if all that needs to be done to solve this crisis is to keep an occasional eye on the emissions, what’s the problem? (sarc)
I have designed gas plants, compressor stations and pipelines for 40 years. Many performance tests including inlet/outlet mass balances. Their stated leakage assumption of 2.3% is high approximately by a factor of 10, in fact you can not normally determine any leakage exists within normal 0.25% meter error. I think they meant to say “…the worst case estimate to date…” because it sure isn’t the best estimate to date.
Methane’s pretty groovy right now, when you see a flat emissions graph from 1990-2015 (GHGI April 2017 p.4) with cow farts in purple, it’s a sign there’s been no radical escalation. There may be competing economic factors like, I was eating steak in 1990 but can now only afford hot dogs.
On p.9 you can see the best news of all: starting around 2011 an amazing drop in “associated gas venting” which means they’re capturing and storing ‘almost all’ natural gas in oil production. My parents drove Route 66 in the ’60s and they said burning oil well flares lit the sky at night. What percentage of our total gas reserve was wasted during those decades, I wonder. On p.14 there is a ugly surprise, a red peak for “well emissions” from one event: the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak.
Remember the concerns of this leak being set alight? They were, like,
donteventhinkaboutit.
80 x 0 = 0. Not to worry.
80 x 0 = 0. Nothing to worry about.
So the EDF believes that people in the gas business throw away over 2% of their production? They are clearly insane. Government employees may consider this to be plausible, but this is not how industry works.
The global methane data is based on a measurement uncertainty of 700 to 900 ppt. Although this is analytically feasible for a single sample point connected with a well purged sampling system to the analytical instrument, I have little confidence that this uncertainty can be maintained over the full extent of their global sampling network.
Your cited reference in the EDF article states that “Even a small amount of methane emitted to the atmosphere can undo some or all of the benefits we think we’re getting when we substitute natural gas for coal or oil.” If so, how do you then explain the well-known observation that since the beginning of the natural gas revolution air pollution in the US has been steadily decreasing?
The likelihood of a useful result from studies of present-day methane emissions is slim and none. Credible time-series of the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere for meaningful time periods are non-existent. I suspect that most of the hypothetical problems related to the presence of greenhouse gas emissions would disappear if the underlying premise that now is the time to convert to renewable energy sources were eliminated from consideration. Solar power is only in the energy mix because of government subsidies. Without subsidies, solar is non-competitive and will remain non-competitive for decades or more.
Caltech’s Nate Lewis, Argyros Professor of Chemistry, whose work is at the leading edge of research on solar power, has said publicly that “I need to dissuade you up front from one important notion, that some low-cost process is magically going to take us away from fossil energy within the next 20 or 30 years. That’s simply false.” Lewis estimates that population and GDP growth could triple energy demand by 2050. He has concluded that “solar is … far and away the most expensive way we have of making electricity today, with costs ranging from 25 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour for photovoltaic systems, that is to say solar panels. Solar thermal systems, … run 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is still too expensive. Nobody is going to pay that much for a substitution product, when they can get the original one for four cents a kilowatt-hour.”
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) recently predicted a century of non-warming in which CO2 does not play a significant role. The implications from the CERN are that the models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to estimate future temperatures are too high and that the models should be redone. There is no urgency to convert prematurely to renewable energy sources and end up with a grid with unreliable energy sources.
Expectations of long-term climate studies should be defined before embarking on lifetime projects running down rabbit holes and producing nothing of value. A practical goal is to successfully predict global mean temperatures within a range of values narrow enough to realistically guide public environmental policy decisions. Until then, “What if” studies can be deferred for a few decades until the boundary conditions are known, that is, the probability weighted estimates, not hot button “high” estimates or “low” estimates that are, by themselves, useless.
“Anything from the EDF is untrustworthy, in my opinion.”
2.3 percent is in the ballpark.
No, it isn’t Mosh. I have been part of many performance tests of gas plants with millions of dollars of process guarantees on the line, on site labs, the works. 2.3% of production does NOT disappear anywhere. 0.25% meter error is what you end up arguing with the client over.
“Methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after its release.”
The basic ‘global warming potential’ (GWP) of methane is 11. (IPCC 1992)
The calculated GWP of methane is increased on the assumption that when methane is broken down in the atmosphere, over a period of some 8.4-8.9 years (McConnell et al, 1971), into carbon dioxide, (etc.), the subsequent residency time of this carbon dioxide is added to arrive at the final estimate of the total GWP of atmospheric methane.
The original claim by the IPCC was (a combined) GWP of 21, which was subsequently raised to 25.
The IPCC make this addition because they also claim that carbon dioxide has an atmospheric residency period of ~100 years. (at least – based on the ‘Bern’ Model).
Studies of the carbon 14/carbon 12 ratio in the atmosphere emitted by nuclear tests, the ‘Bomb Test Curve’, however indicates that the Bern model is inconsistent with virtually all other reported experimental results, and the IPCC has consistently ignored these empirically determined carbon dioxide atmospheric residency times (5 to 14 years).
There is no detectable delay in this process resulting from contributions of ‘slow oceanic events’, as asserted by the IPCC to explain the difference.
Claims of a GWP of 80 as used in this Report therefore cannot be realistically substantiated.
Incidentally, the impact on methane levels arising from emissions from livestock, is also incorrectly calculated using the rules mandated by the UNFCCC.
For every tonne of methane emitted by livestock, 2.75 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been previously removed from the atmosphere by the plants the livestock ate. This is a normal part of the carbon cycle and there is therefore no net increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from this source.
Do these idiots really think that producers would stand still while LOSING 2% of production?
http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/modtran/
Try varying the CH4 and see how much difference it makes. Note, magnifying glass may be required.
So, has Mr Sweeny a plan to stop all the methane leaking from lakes, swamps and volcanoes? Thought not. Gas companies lose money when pipelines and wells leak, so they are quite proactive when it comes to stopping leaks. Funny how capitalism is always the only workable solution to ALL problems espoused by leftists.
“It’s the culmination of 10 years of studies by scientists across the country, many of which were spearheaded by CIRES and NOAA.”
So CIRES and NOAA had an agenda and directed the “independent” studies. Funded by grant money rounded up by C an N. Collect some data, funnel it into a spreadsheet and push the Get Right Answer Regardless command. Ka Ching.
Oh wait, they said they flew over something like 6000 wells. But less than 100 were actually studied and 21 were thrown out because including them would not get the right answer. How many studies?? How much money?
“The methane lost to leakage is worth an estimated $2 billion,” This is the only thing from the entire report that provides any useful information. I don’t see a cost estimate of the repairs or redesign(s) that would need to be made, but it appears possible that a one-time leak detection and repair project can save more money than it costs. Is there a table of stuff most likely to leak? And another column for quantity lost? I might have to read the report.
To the extent natural gassers have embraced climate change hokum to gain competitive advantage, they deserve every bit of this. I hope they choke on it.
what happens when the earth farts?
So we can increase the worlds usable gas production by 2.3 percent by tightening up the system. Some one tell me that is not a financial incentive. We are talking trillions of cubic meters .