US oil and gas emissions are measured in aerial site measurements

Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector in the United States: A combined study of airborne and natural gas measurements at 7 million square degrees

The oil and gas industry may be emitting about three-times the amount of climate-warming methane than government estimates show, according to a new study in Nature.

Evan Sherwin is a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory research scientist who studied oil production in areas that are mostly focused on oil. But oil and gas often come out of the ground together, and if there wasn’t a way to transport the less-valuable gas to where it could be sold, leaks were higher.

The study’s researchers used airplanes to gather 986,238 measurements of methane emissions from six domestic oil and gas production areas. The data include about half the country’s onshore oil production and 29% of natural gas production. Then researchers combined that aerial data with information from sites on the ground, including wells, compressor stations, gas processing plants and pipelines.

Methane is the main component of natural gas, and it is also produced when extracting crude oil. Methane is among the greenhouse gasses heating the planet, and it is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Measurements of the Methane Pollution in Canada and the Launch of a Ground Based Satellite Detector for the Air Showers at the Fermilab Environment

Policies are starting to be put into place, which could signal a turning point in the future. Greater transparency is coming. Awareness is growing and we are better able to shut down large leaks quickly.

If countries fully implement existing pledges on methane reductions, that will make significant progress toward achieving global climate goals, according to the IEA.

Conrad, D. R., Xie, D. and Johnson were involved in a measurement based inventory of oil and gas methane in Canada. Commun. 4, 416, was the planet’s earth environment.

Earlier this month the Environmental Defense Fund led the launch of MethaneSAT, which will circle the Earth 15 times a day looking for methane from the oil and gas industry. Researchers and the public have a better understanding of the extent of the methane pollution problem with other projects including one from NASA.

“It’s night and day even compared to five or six years ago,” Sherwin says. In the past, collecting data was done mostly on the ground and was labor intensive. He says satellites are able to gather more information in a shorter amount of time.

Comprehensive evaluation of aircraft-based methane sensing for greenhouse gas mitigation. US Environmental Protection Agency. Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (1990-2020)

The findings concur with other studies that conclude the EPA’s estimates are too low. Getting accurate measurements is important because the U.S. is among countries pledging to cut methane pollution as one of its key climate goals. To achieve that, the EPA issued rules for slashing the industry’s methane emissions in December. Those rules now face a legal challenge from Texas.

The journal El Abbadi, S. et al. Comprehensive evaluation of aircraft-based methane sensing for greenhouse gas mitigation. Preprint at eartharxiv.org/repository/view/5569/ (2023).

US Environmental Protection Agency. Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2020; www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks-1990-2020 (2022).

Cusworth, D. H. et al. Strong methane point sources contribute a disproportionate fraction of total emissions across multiple basins in the United States. Proc. Natl Acad. USA 118, e2340129 (22)

Fox, T. A., Gao, M., Barchyn, T. E., Jamin, Y. L. & Hugenholtz, C. H. An agent-based model for estimating emissions reduction equivalence among leak detection and repair programs. J. Clean. Prod. 282, 125237 (2021).

The data is for US oil and gas emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements. Zenodo https://zenodo.org/records/10064774 (2023).

Source: US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements

V. Masson-Delmotte. Climate change 2021: The basis of physical science is the physical science. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

V. Masson-Delmotte is a writer. (eds.) Climate Change 2021: The basis of physical science is the physical science. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021).

Brandt, A. R., Heath, G. A. & Cooley, D. Methane leaks from natural gas systems follow extreme distributions. Environ. It is a science. 50, 12512–12520 (2016).

Yarmuth, J. A. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, H.R.5376, Public Law No. 117–169, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376/text (2022).