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Big Oil methane emissions: ‘significant gap’ between reality and reporting
- oblib 5y agoOil companies not telling the truth about the environmental impact of their processing should be dealt with in a way that take all of the profits, and then some, but since most all politicians here have taken money from them the odds of that happening seem very low.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoOld news, just FYI https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chevron-redubs-ship-named-for-Bush-aide-2922481.php https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chevron-redubs-ship-...
- colechristensen 5y agoSomething that needs to happen more often is corporate abusers need to be fined into bankruptcy, shareholders wiped out, ownership transferred to the people (state) and kept operating while sold or broken up into pieces during bankruptcy restructuring. i.e. real consequences for boards and shareholders that aren't just small dents in quarterly profits while minimizing consequences for the more ordinary workers
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- breakyerself 5y agoThat sounds like Utopia compared to what we have.
- andrepd 5y agoThat this doesn't happen is all the more proof we live in a plutocracy with a veneer of democracy.
- colechristensen 5y agoCompanies have been destroyed by courts, but very few, very infrequently.
- bboylen 5y agoWhat? How on earth would the government seizing control of one of the largest industries in the country make us more of a democracy? We would then be in company with countries such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, famously democratic countries
- dajoh 5y agowhat about norway
- samvega_ 5y agoWhat you're describing is practically impossible in a capitalist state, both due to political unwillingness and by juridical obstructions. One has to realize that the main function of a capitalist state is to secure private capital and facilitate profits for the capitalist class, in short - to preserve the class hierarchy.
- sekh60 5y agoSeems anything being remotely anti-capitalist gets downvoted here.
- ccn0p 5y agono, just comments that draw conclusions based off conjecture.
- fuzzfactor 5y agoOne thing's for sure, the US & Canada were founded by multinational corporations for the benefit of multinational corporations. IIRC not public corporations but with royals and noblemen for partners. After so much time people are bound to draw different conclusions sometimes.
- Scoundreller 5y agoAnd actual liability for directors. None of this “oh, just take all my shareholder’s money for my mistakes in exchange for jail time”
- cwkoss 5y agoShould the death penalty be on the table for executives in particularly egregious acts of pollution? Environmental destruction irreparably harms public commons, including the lives of millions of future humans. These people are making millions and it doesn't seem like current enforcement has the desired deterrent effect. Slaps on the wrist with small fines don't seem effective. How often do executives get prison time for serious pollution? Is there a fair legal test that you believe would justify the death penalty for egregious acts of pollution where an executive knowingly participated in the cover up? Currently it feels like the commons is being exploited without consequence. I can't help but think that executing just a couple of the worst offenders would make violators much more cautious and curtail this destructive behavior.
- gruez 5y ago>Should the death penalty be on the table for executives in particularly egregious acts of pollution because that worked so well to deter murderers? >These people are making millions and it doesn't seem like current enforcement has the desired deterrent effect. Slaps on the wrist with small fines don't seem effective. I don't understand why the logical progression from "small fines" is "death penalty".
- cwkoss 5y agoPolluters can make hundreds or thousands of people get sick or die due to cancers, respiratory illnesses, etc as well as making species go extinct. That seems worse to me than even the worst mass shooters, but there doesn't seem to be proportional prosecution of these crimes.
- oblib 5y agoI think as long as we have a death penalty than, yes, it should be on the table. Some of the comments on your question offer compelling reason for that to be the case.
- convolvatron 5y agoit would be irresponsible of a corporate officer to not optimize for profit as decreased operating expenses vs the risk of environmental litigation.
- _Microft 5y agoThis reminds me of a cartoon. In front of the skyline of a derelict city, a man in a torn suit and a few children in similarly ragged clothes are sitting at a campfire. The man says: “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”. You can find it here: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- the_gastropod 5y agoIrresponsible to what? Their shareholders? Or life on planet Earth?
- TrainedMonkey 5y agoTo the most important thing - his bank account.
- handrous 5y ago"Responsible" performance of a role in an organization doesn't put one above judgement for one's actions, at all, which may, though correct from a very narrow perspective, be horrible. The most obvious & crystal-clear examples would Godwin the thread, but I trust the idea's simple enough not to need illustration by example.
- mperham 5y agoSociety bears the cost, the profit goes to the shareholders. Capitalism in a nutshell.
- drocer88 5y agoCommunism also : https://search.brave.com/search?q=pollution%20in%20soviet%20union https://search.brave.com/search?q=pollution%20in%20soviet%20...
- deepinsand 5y agoI've spent a good amount of time on oil wells, and this was always obvious. Methane passively leaks from the ground of most wells, and is usually related to the quality of the cement reinforcements. There is no real incentive for oil companies to use higher quality materials.
- arbuge 5y agoThere may be more to this story. I believe "Big Oil" actually wanted tighter control of methane emissions to remain in place when the previous administration proposed relaxing them. The problem may be with smaller producers, who would be favored by that relaxation if they have less resources for compliance than bigger companies do: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/901863874/trumps-methane-rollback-that-big-oil-doesn-t-want https://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/901863874/trumps-methane-roll...
- pueblito 5y agoI’m sure the smaller producers are lying about methane too. Call it a hunch.
- colechristensen 5y agoThere is truth to the GP post. Large producers have a tendency to prefer stronger regulations, especially new regulations because they have a competitive advantage in being able to implement them fully while their smaller competitors will be more likely to struggle and ultimately fail and sell cheap to the bigger fish. In other words for a lot of regulations a considerable portion of the cost to implement is fixed and does not scale with org size which tends to put smaller operators at a further competitive disadvantage.
- thedmstdmstdmst 5y agoI think it's more the large producers are global companies who have exposure to investors with different goals than smaller companies who have investors essentially looking at them like the lotto.
- mistrial9 5y agoyes agree - I posted here about methane, small "cowboy" oil and gas in West Texas, and some conflict with Big Oil at the time.. remote methane detection using specialized sensors and Deep Learning on the sensing data, has pulled the kimono from this situation.. Big Oil saw a political liability, and did advocate to that US Fed Administration to be strict, and the opposite happened. I very much appreciate the Daylight here on this topic, much needed
- CompelTechnic 5y agoI spent months trying to get a valve to pass the API 622 fugitive emissions test. It never passed before I got laid off. I suspect that valve stem packing for valves at methane plants is one of the leading contributors for this.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoWhat were the challenges you faced attempting to have the valve pass?
- whall6 5y agoWhich number is reality? How can we know what is the true number. We are only confident to a _degree_. I get that there is an obvious incentive for o&g to bias downward, but we shouldn’t lead ourselves astray thinking that an outside audit is 100% accurate. It’s useful but we shouldn’t hang our hats on it. Also, I get this is tangential to the true point, but it just bothers me when numbers derived from estimation are labeled as “reality”.
- nend 5y agoI mean, I get your point. The underlying data and studies should be analyzed and confirmed. But as the article mentions this is not the only study showing an under reporting of emissions, and as you said oil companies have obvious incentives to under report. So the question is now "how much is being under reported", but not "are oil companies under reporting". >Which number is reality? Not the one the oil companies are telling us, which should be alarming.
- jhallenworld 5y agoTheir Co2 emissions from flaring unused methane is also significant. This company has some kind of live map of them: https://www.flaringmonitor.org/ https://www.flaringmonitor.org/
- yborg 5y agoNot that you want any extra greenhouse gas emissions, but methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas on short timescales, 100x over 5 years. CO2 is the lesser of the two evils.
- Geee 5y agoOne way to reduce methane emissions is to burn it and generate electricity for Bitcoin mining. It gives a direct incentive to try to contain all methane. There's an estimate that all methane that is currently flared or released would generate enough electricity to run the whole Bitcoin network 10 times over. Bitcoin mining is suitable for this, because no costly infrastructure is needed for transporting the methane (which would happen anyway if it was economical). Bitcoin miners can be located in remote areas near the oil fields. See https://www.crusoeenergy.com/digital-flare-mitigation https://www.crusoeenergy.com/digital-flare-mitigation
- bequanna 5y agoBut isn't the challenge actually capturing, storing, and transporting the methane? At a minimum, you'll need the first 2 even if you colocate your generator and mining rig near the methane source. I guess I would be skeptical that this is cost effective vs. other cheap electricity sources.
- Geee 5y agoMost of it is already captured and burned, without using it to generate electricity. It's called flaring. And if they can get money from it, it should make sense to try to capture more.
- pierre 5y agoSo instead of methane that will stay ~10 year (GWP of 2.8-3.4) in the atmosphere, you release C02 (GWP of 1) that will stay ~10k year. So short term (for ~10year) you reduce warming by ~3.5, if your look long term (10k years) you increase warming by 285x by doing that. CH4 + 2 O2 → CO2 + 2 H2O Not sure I will call that a win for the climate. (and this energy could be put to better use than burning it on crypto)
- Geee 5y agoI've been under the impression that methane is way worse for climate than carbon dioxide. And that's why most of the methane is usually flared, but maybe there are other reasons. There's a company called Crusoe Energy [0] who develops this, and they use the energy for other computational tasks as well. However, bitcoin mining is the most straightforward and scalable way to convert energy into money. [0] https://www.crusoeenergy.com https://www.crusoeenergy.com
- michael1999 5y agoThis is why I've always preferred a metered tax on pollutants over a regulated "limit". Without revenue attached, there is less-than-zero budget to measure and audit in the firm _or_ the regulator. But with a metered tax (on methane, co2, benzene, etc), weak or fraudulent self reporting become back-taxes owed with penalties which tends to attract interested headcount.
- amelius 5y agoEurope (ESA) has a satellite program that can measure methane emissions from space. https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P/Mapping_high-resolution_methane_emissions_from_space https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...
- adamking 5y agoCalifornia also launching one soon. https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/california-nasa-partner-launch-methane-tracking-satellite-2021-04-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/califo...
- guest 5y agoThis first snapshot, of the top 15 producers, finds that oil super-majors Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron are the worst performers, followed by ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil and ExxonMobil. https://www.reuters.com/article/emissions-methane-idUSMTZSPDEH8EU9J79K https://www.reuters.com/article/emissions-methane-idUSMTZSPD...