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Methane leaks from US gas fields dwarf government estimates
- _rpd 8y agotl;dr: > methane emissions in 2015 were about 60% greater than estimates from the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory: a 2.3% leakage rate compared to the 1.4% estimate from the EPA. “Instead of coming from the well to the pipeline, the gas is escaping through vents or other openings in the system, and it adds up to a lot of emissions,” says Alvarez.
- ta1234567890 8y agoThis is so sad. Any ideas on how stuff like this could realistically be fixed? Are there any incentives that could be put in place? What would be the incentive for the people that have that power to make those changes?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hanniabu 8y agoRemoving lobbyists, removing buyable politicians, electing politicians that believe in science
- jjoonathan 8y agoRemove the mandatory bribe quota first and the politicians will follow.
- mac01021 8y agoMandatory bribe quota?
- jjoonathan 8y agoYou need X amount of money to run a campaign and you get money primarily by accepting campaign contributions from completely charitable wealthy donors and interest groups whose objectives just happen to align with your political ideology. If you chop out the euphemisms and rationalization, it's a mandatory bribe quota.
- mac01021 8y agoWhat is the order of magnitude of X?
- jjoonathan 8y agoA few million for a senate or house seat. The total cost of the election is several billion. Peanuts in comparison to what lobbyists get in return. It would be extremely economical for us taxpayers to fund it ourselves. https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php?cycle=2018&display=A&type=M https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php?cycle=2018&di...
- sremani 8y agoThere is already incentive for the private operators to not lose these gases during production or transmission as it cuts into their margins. This is like leaving money on the table.
- ceejayoz 8y agoThat's not necessarily true, though, if capturing it costs more than just letting it leak.
- sremani 8y agoI am not saying there are really no bad or incompetent actors.. but it costs the industry $2 billion per year because of these loses. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/climate/methane-leaks.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/climate/methane-leaks.htm...
- ceejayoz 8y agoAnd if they could fix that for $1B/year, they'd do so. Instead, you can find industry groups quoted in that article complaining about the study.
- mirimir 8y agoThe problem is that, given the greenhouse forcing, those leaks will arguably cost society much more than a few $billion per year. It's just that the gas industry isn't legally responsible for that. And that's why they don't want to stop the leaks.
- dmichulke 8y agoMany companies don't do shit as long as they operate with a profit. What happens often is that s small player seizes the opportunity and then gets bought. Maybe there are regulations that keep smaller and / or separate entities from acting in this regard.
- st26 8y ago
- cascom 8y agomore aggressive surveillance - there is a ton of gas leak detection technology out there, but its use is optional in most places...
- pdubs 8y agoCarbon tax
- sgc 8y agoMethane tax.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoMethane contains just as much carbon as carbon dioxide does. (By volume; by weight it would be a lot more.)
- pjc50 8y agoFracking ban.
- daxorid 8y agoFracking and horizontal drilling are the only things that have kept us out of a global energy crisis. Without their application to tight oil and gas fields, the world would be firmly on the downslope of the global Hubbert peak right now. Ban it at your peril.
- sremani 8y agoI really feel really bad you are getting down voted. There is lack of understanding of how shale revolution reshaped America and its energy independence here in this forum.
- phragomax 8y agoWhat has energy independence actually done for America? We are still fighting wars in the Middle East. For decades people were saying we need to end reliance on foreign oil. Well, we've ended it. What has that gotten us besides underpriced gasoline?
- pretendscholar 8y agoCheap energy inputs make everything else cheaper.
- st26 8y agoIt's mostly political. The conservatives argue no regulation of any kind is needed because the industry will self-regulate and capture all the leaking methane because it's lost money. (Mysteriously, the methane continues to leak, and oil & gas continues to lobby against requirements to fix the leak) As a secondary improvement, cheaper monitoring equipment might make the political fight easier to win. Another improvement, the gas is owned by the public, and I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line- after the leaks. O&G has little incentive to avoid wasting resources that "belong" to someone else that they have not paid a dime for. Just pump more.
- privacypoller 8y ago>> I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line That's not true in any regime I'm aware of. Ownership and royalties are accounted for at the zone, which is well before the wellhead, let-alone downstream. Any loss between where the gas is produced and the final sale is known as "shrinkage" which can be allocated to different buckets, most commonly fuel and flaring. I'm not sure where leakage would be accounted for, probably "Transmission" or "Distribution". What's criminal is that unaccounted for gas (known as UAF) is widely measured on the end-user distribution network, so I'd be very surprised if Oil Co. didn't have all the information they need to figure out loss from the wellhead. They either can't be bothered to amalgamate the data or just don't want to know the answer (or do and keep it secret).
- deepinsand 8y agoFounded rigup.com to try address this issue. Improving the quality of the cement casing is a huge factor, along with hiring competent workers and scheduling inspections. It all comes down to creating financial incentives. IIRC, Obama's proposed fracking regulation (that most presumed Hilary would run with) called for regular visits of sites. Sadly it never passed. Once Trump undid the only thing Obama got through, federal land methane restrictions, companies had no incentive to worry anymore. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/climate/trump-methane-rule-repeal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/climate/trump-methane-rul...
- forapurpose 8y ago> companies had no incentive to worry anymore I know what you are saying, but I want to add that it's insane: The owners of the companies have to live in this world, as do their decedents. Also, they are not all sociopaths who don't care if people die and suffer. I think it's a mistake to think they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps it's the powerful propaganda machine that runs through the WSJ and other business publications, but whatever the cause, it's a problem that I think can be overcome.
- arbitrary_name 8y agoDon't be so naive, my friend. There is ample evidence to show that either a) those people believe in their ability to avoid consequences (see the difference between responses to rising sea levels between poor and wealthy florida neighbourhoods) or b) are heavily incentivised to believe there are no consequences (the old saw of a man being able to believe or disbelieve anything if his paycheck depends on it). I work with Oil and gas execs. They are almost uniformly very conservative and do not believe in any aspect or climate change, or taking activity to mitigate the effects. They are not the receivers of propaganda, they are the creators of propaganda.
- 24gttghh 8y agoIn case you're wondering, burning natural gas does produce ~half the CO2 you would release from burning various types of coal, [0] the dirtiest (yes, much worse than all of the nuclear power accidents combined[1]) of all methods of electricity production. But it still produces CO2! And at the rate at which natural gas is taking over a greater share of the energy production of the world economy, we are still looking at catastrophic global warming.[2][3] [0]https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11 [1]https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-harmful-than-nuclear-power/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-... [2]https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/environmental-impacts-of-natural-gas https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fu... [3]https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/infographic-climate-change-risks-natural-gas https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/coal-and-other-fossil-fu...
- jacquesm 8y agoIn a five year period Methane traps ~100 times more energy than the equivalent quantity of CO2, so not burning Methane because it escapes is far worse than burning it! http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/methane-vs-carbon-dioxide-a-greenhouse-gas-showdown/ http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/methane-vs-ca...
- 24gttghh 8y agoWhich brings us around to the subject of the article ;)
- mrfusion 8y agoBut it also doesn’t hang around for that long. Maybe better in the long term to release it than burn it?
- wcoenen 8y agoFor most of the ways methane breaks down, it gets converted to CO2 anyway[1]. So it's better to break it down to CO2 immediately to avoid the stronger greenhouse effect of methane. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_sinks_of_atmospheric_methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si...
- binarymax 8y agoAn unfortunate title (does nature do click bait now?). Why use the term dwarf instead of quoting the numeric value (or say "more than double")?
- 24gttghh 8y ago8 million -> 13 million metric tons (+60% increase) of Methane seems like a big jump.
- hnburnsy 8y agoShouldn't the correct title be "New methane leak estimate dwarfs government estimates" From the article... "They then extrapolated the figures to estimate methane leaks at the national level."
- avip 8y agoTo anyone reading "“tremendous opportunity” to reduce methane emissions by developing systems to quickly detect malfunctions at oil and gas facilities" and running to the garage to connect an RPI to an off-the-shelf 5$ sensor and submit her YC2019 application: The tech is there. It's been there for years. Everything is in place, this is a political/emission tax/EPA/incentive issue per-se.
- rotexo 8y agoI was just thinking about this in reference to organizations like the Citizen's Climate Lobby. The real technology that needs to be developed here is a politically feasible way to levy taxes on known carbon emitters.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoRun for office or support candidates who align with preventing/mitigating climate change. It is the only way. All of the tech in the world is useless if you can't enforce its use.
- tomatotomato37 8y agoSo are a lot of other startup opportunities, but that just means you don't mention it during the presentations for your funding rounds
- jstanley 8y agoIf the technology is demonstrably easy to make, and there is a clear need for it, and yet it's still not in wide use, then I would say there certainly is a "tremendous opportunity". The fact that some people have failed to take advantage of the opportunity doesn't mean other people shouldn't try.
- zeth___ 8y agoThis is an issue about regulations. You will not see regulations against the fossil fuel industry under a republican president, house and senate.
- Netcob 8y agoWell the regular government really dropped the ball there, fortunately the dwarf government was more vigilant.
- teachrdan 8y agoFor folks who didn't read the article, the real problem is that methane is much more efficient a greenhouse gas at trapping heat compared to CO2: by some estimates, 86 TIMES more potent. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-greenhouse-gas-is-methane/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...
- masteranza 8y agoNot saying we shouldn't pay attention when some estimates are wrong, but perhaps it's not the best idea to take an alarmist's attitude: https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/06/hansens-testimony-30th-anniversary.html#more https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/06/hansens-testimony-30th-an...
- masteranza 8y agoAlso much more on methane in particular: https://motls.blogspot.com/search?q=methane https://motls.blogspot.com/search?q=methane
- lern_too_spel 8y agoScott Aaronson's response to Lubos Motl's skepticism is informative: "My position is an incredibly simple one: just like with the link between smoking and cancer, or the lack of a link between vaccines and autism, or any other issue where I lack the expertise to evaluate the evidence myself, I’ll go with what certainly looks like an overwhelming consensus among the scientists who’ve studied the matter carefully. Period. If the climate skeptics want to win me over, then the way for them to do so is straightforward: they should ignore me, and try instead to win over the academic climatology community, majorities of chemists and physicists, Nobel laureates, the IPCC, National Academies of Science, etc. with superior research and arguments. "To this, the skeptics might respond: but of course we can’t win over the mainstream scientific community, since they’re all in the grip of an evil left-wing conspiracy or delusion! Now, that response is precisely where “the buck stops” for me, and further discussion becomes useless. If I’m asked which of the following two groups is more likely to be in the grip of a delusion — (a) Senate Republicans, Freeman Dyson, and a certain excitable string-theory blogger, or (b) virtually every single expert in the relevant fields, and virtually every other chemist and physicist who I’ve ever respected or heard of — well then, it comes down to a judgment call, but I’m 100% comfortable with my judgment." https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1307 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1307
- masteranza 8y agoExcept, that most scientists (physicists that I know) who independently checked the issue seem to agree with Lubos.
- Alex3917 8y agoHere is a TED talk my dad just gave about a satellite they're building to track down the source of these methane leaks and fix the issue: https://www.ted.com/talks/fred_krupp_what_if_we_tracked_methane_from_space_and_hit_the_brakes_on_climate_change https://www.ted.com/talks/fred_krupp_what_if_we_tracked_meth...
- wollstonecraft 8y agoWhat is the detection limit?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoWould your Dad be interested in him and his team doing an AMA?
- tejtm 8y agoSatellite image of burning gas as a "waste product" from five years ago. Note there are no large cities of people there. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/28/article-2269517-17381F79000005DC-867_964x643.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/01/28/article-2269517-17...
- greglindahl 8y agoThe article is about unburned leaking gas, which has an extra-large greenhouse effect. That's why the gas is mostly burned, if it can't be used.
- driverdan 8y agoI downvoted you for linking to something from the Daily Mail rag. Nothing they publish is reliable or trustworthy.
- tejtm 8y agoSorry mate, first image link in a DDG search nothing profound, Not even familiar with who they are, granted I was pretty sure they they did not take the snap. I will try to be mote discerning next time (the thought had crossed my mind to figure out whence it came)
- basicplus2 8y agoI wonder how this fits into the 21% of the total emissions... being 33% (fossil fuels) of the 64% (human induced sources) https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissions https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/methane-emissio...