Regulating methane, which is leaking faster than thought

Methane has been in the news this week:

1. Methane Leaks in Natural-Gas Supply Chain Far Exceed Estimates, Study Says

“A little-noted portion of the chain of pipelines and equipment that brings natural gas from the field into power plants and homes is responsible for a surprising amount of methane emissions, according to a study published on Tuesday. Natural-gas gathering facilities, which collect from multiple wells, lose about 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas a year, about eight times as much as estimates used by the Environmental Protection Agency … The newly discovered leaks, if counted in the E.P.A. inventory, would increase its entire systemwide estimate by about 25 percent.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/science/methane-leaks-in-natural-...

2. Methane Leaks May Greatly Exceed Estimates, Report Says

“A device commonly used to measure the methane that leaks from industrial sources may greatly underestimate those emissions, said an inventor of the technology that the device relies on.”

The report found that the Bacharach Hi Flow Sampler, the methane sensor in use around the world, can greatly underestimate methane levels in some situations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/science/methane-leaks-may-greatly...

3. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas (causes more global warming) than carbon dioxide. 30 times more, by one measure. Over half of the methane released into Earth's atmosphere is anthropogenic, not natural. Within anthropogenic methane emissions, the two biggest contributors are livestock and the energy industry, and the latter is growing, because of the natural gas industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

4. E.P.A. Announces New Rules to Cut Methane Emissions

“The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed the first federal regulations requiring the nation’s oil and gas industry to cut emissions of methane as part of an expanding and increasingly aggressive effort to combat climate change. … The rules were designed to ensure that oil and gas companies reduced waste and sold more gas that would otherwise be lost, while protecting the climate and the health of the public. … The proposals — which would require drillers to stop leaks and capture lost gas even in wells intended to extract only oil — would cost the industry up to $420 million to carry out by 2025, but that there would be savings, including reduced waste, of as much as $550 million during that period, bringing a net benefit of as much as $150 million. …

The administration has set a goal of reducing methane emissions by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025. The latest proposed regulations are expected to reduce methane emissions by 20 to 30 percent. … Oil and gas companies oppose the proposals, calling them unnecessary and costly, while environmental advocacy groups say they do not go far enough because they apply mainly to new wells and not most existing ones.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/us/epa-announces-new-rules-to-cut...

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by MJ on August 23, 2015 at 1:30pm

Craig,

I always enjoy your inputs on this site.  My belief is that this earth will take care of itself regardless of our insignificant presence here - everything else is BS - including the pauls of this world.

Permalink Reply by George on August 24, 2015 at 12:55am
Every time America has an industry making money the Liberal Tax Takers find ways to STEAL from it.
It's no different then the Mafia coming to get their unlawful share.
Permalink Reply by Jack Young on August 24, 2015 at 4:09am

Paul does his cause a disservice almost every time he posts as he does so selectively and gets caught on it almost every time. The paper he mentions claiming that industrial gas detectors under-report leaks is a classic case. Those devices were designed for an industry that wants to spot leaks, and if anything the data that the industry has finds that they over-report. The anti-gas folks don’t seem to realize that this equipment wasn’t designed cleverly to hide leaks – quite the contrary.

 

Those manufacturers being attacked have defended their products strongly, and I suspect that the paper Paul cites is just another attempt to create an alternate reality that the anti-gas movement can use to support the position they took before any of the “research” they rely on was ever done. The way that all works out to make their uniformed initial opinions look like fantastically accurate predictions should make everyone question them. Real science is seldom so tidy.

 

And I love the article that claims that gas gathering systems are “little-noted”.  If there’s any part of the gas production and transportation that gets noticed, it’s the gathering lines. They are right on the leases, generally running alongside the roads that the welltenders drive daily. Leaks there are easy to spot and correct, and that’s a job every producer takes seriously as you can’t sell what leaks out. The fact that the anti-gas crowd didn’t know that these pipelines existed after years of attacking the business highlights how little actual time they’ve spent researching the how natural gas gets produced and transported.

 

Enough said – I could go on forever, but Paul doesn’t seem to care about his mistakes. He just keeps posting baloney next to a photo showing a smiling man who doesn’t really seem willing to take the topic seriously.

Permalink Reply by Dan on August 24, 2015 at 2:04pm
Permalink Reply by Thomas Malcolm Pendergast on February 20, 2016 at 12:57pm

That's very interesting.  It reminds me of an old tourist attraction near Niagara Falls.  It also was a sort of "eternal" flame.  It's depleted now though.

Permalink Reply by Gas Boy on August 24, 2015 at 12:44pm

Pffffttt...................oops, another leak from the GasBoy pipeline.  Just lost a nickel.  LOLOL

Permalink Reply by Robin Smith-lutz on September 14, 2015 at 10:14am

You know many nations in EU and Asia use methane to make electricity. For a nation that is supposed to be the greatest on earth...we have fallen so far behind that we are no longer in the game.

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on September 14, 2015 at 10:43am
Dumb isn't it ?
Permalink Reply by Robin Smith-lutz on September 14, 2015 at 10:55am

VERY! it is free for the taking, would reduce the use of oil..to free more oil up for use in other areas and it would deal with the Methane problem in an intelligent way. For whatever reason the government seems hell bent on destroying the country,

Permalink Reply by Joseph-Ohio on September 14, 2015 at 11:53am
That's the monkey business the voters somehow need to change.

Way too much monkey business - zero common sense.

I think the more ridiculous the legislation the more ridiculous things become and the better the politicians like it; as they can spend their terms debating meaningless backward thinking babble.

Most anything they do seems to me to put our country and our population behind the proverbial eight ball.

Most everything they spend their time on looks to me like inert fodder primarily being debated for their own reasons.

To me the politicians seem to have made a profession of debating the meaningless which somehow also keeps them rich.
Permalink Reply by Thomas Malcolm Pendergast on February 20, 2016 at 1:06pm

Hi Joseph!

I suggest that you go online and follow what Rep. Pat Tiberi and Sen. Lisa Mukowski are doing and have been doing for quite a long time.

Permalink Reply by Thomas Malcolm Pendergast on February 20, 2016 at 1:02pm

Correction, Robin!  One of the main reasons the the U.S. leads the world in the reduction of CO2 emissions is that so many coal-fired generating stations have and are being replaced by CH4-fired generators.

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