Satellite Images Show Biggest Methane Leaks Come From Russia and US (newscientist.com) 46
An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: About a tenth of the global oil and gas industry's methane emissions have been found to come from a group of "ultra-emitter" sites located mostly in Turkmenistan, Russia and the US. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that governments recently agreed to slash by 2030. While huge plumes of methane leaking from gas pipelines have been detected by satellites at individual sites, such as a gas well in Ohio and several pipelines in central Turkmenistan, little has been know about their extent globally.
Now, images captured by an instrument aboard a satellite have been run through an algorithm to automatically detect the biggest plumes of methane streaming from oil and gas facilities worldwide. These ultra-emitters were spotted pumping out more than 25 tons of methane an hour. That's "a heck of a lot," says Steve Hamburg at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a US non-profit organization. Collectively, these contribute about 8 million tons of methane a year, about a tenth of the oil and gas industry's total annual emissions for 2019-20. Turkmenistan was the biggest ultra-emitter, releasing more than a million tons of methane between 2019 and 2020. Russia was second at just under a million tons, followed by the US, Iran, Algeria and Kazakhstan. The US count is probably low because it excluded a major oil and gas region, the Permian basin, due to monitoring difficulties. By contrast to these countries, other major oil producing countries, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, had very few ultra-emitters. "The study also found that ultra-emitting sites are releasing so much methane, which could be sold, that it should be cost effective to solve," reports New Scientist. "For the six worst countries, tackling those plumes should cost up to $300 less per ton than it would typically cost to reduce methane from oil and gas facilities in those nations."
The report also notes that these findings "are based on a snapshot and some ultraemitters may have gone undetected."
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Now, images captured by an instrument aboard a satellite have been run through an algorithm to automatically detect the biggest plumes of methane streaming from oil and gas facilities worldwide. These ultra-emitters were spotted pumping out more than 25 tons of methane an hour. That's "a heck of a lot," says Steve Hamburg at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a US non-profit organization. Collectively, these contribute about 8 million tons of methane a year, about a tenth of the oil and gas industry's total annual emissions for 2019-20. Turkmenistan was the biggest ultra-emitter, releasing more than a million tons of methane between 2019 and 2020. Russia was second at just under a million tons, followed by the US, Iran, Algeria and Kazakhstan. The US count is probably low because it excluded a major oil and gas region, the Permian basin, due to monitoring difficulties. By contrast to these countries, other major oil producing countries, including Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, had very few ultra-emitters. "The study also found that ultra-emitting sites are releasing so much methane, which could be sold, that it should be cost effective to solve," reports New Scientist. "For the six worst countries, tackling those plumes should cost up to $300 less per ton than it would typically cost to reduce methane from oil and gas facilities in those nations."
The report also notes that these findings "are based on a snapshot and some ultraemitters may have gone undetected."
The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Cabbage-based Diet (Score:3)
Who knew you could sell the result of eating Borscht? The Soviet Empire could have been rich.
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I bet the US release is centered around Washington DC.
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No, they like to sniff their own fumes, since they're already up there all the time anyway.
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Isn't that cute, a right wingnut repeating the "Brandon" theme he's heard so much about.
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Texas actually.
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On a more serious note Russian methane emissions are related to Ukraine. If you look at the satellite data for methane leaks, they have very little (compared to USA and Turkmenistan) emissions at the actual gas fields. Similarly, the new parts of the pipeline network to the LNG terminals at Vyborg and the transit cross-border pumping stations for Nord Strea
Statement from International Gass Assoc. (Score:2)
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Bullshit. Make those companies clean up their act.
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Well, this is more like throwing away a few eggs that you could have otherwise sold. It's true that there's some inevitable leakage, but when we're talking about super-emitters we're talking about the low hanging fruit.
Self regulation is the way to go. (Score:3)
Re:Self regulation is the way to go. (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be interesting if the leaks could be pinpointed to specific companies. If it's cost effective to solve, that's lost business and share holders do tend to take such things seriously.
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https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
So .... seems to me the greedy oil companies have simply left some potential profit on the table here?
They're reusing captured methane gas as a substitute for drilling new wells for natural gas.
Also... Arctic Sinkholes (Score:5, Informative)
I recommend this recent (Feb 2, 2022) episode of NOVA about Arctic Sinkholes [youtube.com] exploring melting permafrost and the release of methane (and CO2) from that permafrost and the potential release of vast quantities of fossil methane trapped below it in the Earth's crust. Current global warming trends, exacerbated by human emissions, may cause a positive-feedback permafrost melting loop/cycle. Most current global warming models don't include this permafrost and fossil methane...
Scientists estimate that are about 1.3 trillion tons of methane stored beneath the Arctic. That's nearly 250 times as much methane as there is in Earth's atmosphere today.
Direct PBS video link: Arctic Sinkholes [pbs.org]:
Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
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Seems to me, even back in the 1980's I was hearing that sort of thing - trapped methane being released by glacial melting, the fact that CH4 is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, point of no return around 2000 when the Arctic ice starts melting.
Really makes me think about future real estate values in places like Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi - anyplace with lots of land at or below MSL near their coast. I thi
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the fact that CH4 is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2
Yes, the episode noted that, but also that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300 - 1,000 of years while methane only 9 - 12 years.
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the fact that CH4 is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2
Yes, the episode noted that, but also that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300 - 1,000 of years while methane only 9 - 12 years.
Note that methane breaks down into CO2 and H2O after those 9-12 years... so you have the impact of 300-1000 years of CO2 in addition to those 9-12 years of CH4 impact.
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the fact that CH4 is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2
Yes, the episode noted that, but also that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 300 - 1,000 of years while methane only 9 - 12 years.
Note that methane breaks down into CO2 and H2O after those 9-12 years... so you have the impact of 300-1000 years of CO2 in addition to those 9-12 years of CH4 impact.
Thanks! I hadn't thought of that. Now I'm even more depressed ... :-(
(Noting that a small percentage of methane (and even smaller percentage of CO2) does/may vent off into Space.)
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Thanks! I hadn't thought of that. Now I'm even more depressed ... :-(
(Noting that a small percentage of methane (and even smaller percentage of CO2) does/may vent off into Space.)
Methane does not smell. Usually it is the sulphurous smell created by the expulsion of SO2 by bacteria in combinations with methane. Part of the issue with gas wells is that by far the majority are not "sweet gas" but contain noxious sulphurous gases including one that the Nazi's considered for exterminating undesirables. H2S which in concentrations greater than 10 parts per million becomes debilitating and in concentrations greater than 40 parts per million can become lethal. At 100 parts per million it i
Re: Also... Arctic Sinkholes (Score:2)
I recommend this recent (Feb 2, 2022) episode of NOVA
I saw it. Very interesting. Particularly the piece about the huge sinkhole in Siberia. Caused by deforestation and the subsequent warming of the permafrost.
But then I remembered some research done by scientists (Sergey Nimov) that demonstrated that the effect of returning Siberian forests to grassland has the effect of cooling the ground and slowing the thawing of the permafrost. Nimov wants to introduce moose and reindeer and even bring back the wooly mammoths to help hold back the invading forests.
So no
IGNITION ? (Score:2)
25 t/h is _alot_ 1200 MMBTU/h and would make a big flare (600+ feet) as a point source. Even spread out over a line, it makes quite a flame. I suspect these would be hard to put out if continuous once lit from lightening or static electricity.
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Funny you mention flares. We did some consulting in Russia for a "partner" for some environmental compliance project. One of my colleagues tapped me on the shoulder and said "we're leaving, now!" When I asked him why he showed me a video of his FLIR OGI camera pointed at the safety relief flare. The pilot wasn't lit (which for our on facilities is grounds to shut the entire plant down). There was a shitton of methane coming out of it just waiting to find an ignition source.
There is a big difference in the s
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California has long had a Federal carve out for the ability to put greater limits on emissions. The California Air Resources Board was established in 1967. EPA was commissioned in 1970. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970. Earth Day was first held in 1970. The Clean Water Act was in 1972. CAFE was in 1975.
It's okay to not know something. It's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to not know something and be wrong and then not learn when corrected for reasons of pure ego.
The two countries bellowing the (Score:2)
most hot air.
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Not Ukrainian are you Einstein?
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U has been losing land, they are not the aggressors.
Oxford comma (Score:1)
Fucking use it.
My bad... (Score:1)
So what? (Score:2)
So what? Most methane comes from places most natural gas is being produced. Another attempt at the blame game. Why not instead just praise US and Russia for keeping people warm in the winter, and suggest it would be nice if they controlled methane leaks.
Permian Basin (Score:4, Insightful)
My mother used to work for a major energy company in the Permian basin. She worked on developing the training program for their compliance reporting on new regulations on leaks from natural gas equipment. Eventually, the size of the problem and the difficulties in even measuring it stacked up and that whole chunk of regulation was quietly shelved and everyone given wavers of indeterminate length. It resulted in my mother being laid off along with about 200 other people working on compliance in that area.
So that's why there's no data for the Permian basin. It would have been difficult and expensive to measure. Once measured, it would have resulted in either the shutting down of huge sections of the basin or replacing basically all the infrastructure in the region.
Misleading title - Canada and China are the worst (Score:1)
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Yay! Go Canada!
Oh wait...
Great news. (Score:4, Informative)
So now we have a cheap and easy way to spot substantial methane sources, and it finds much of the emission is from a handful of natural gas operaions.
This is actually great news:
Methane is a very strong greenhouse gas - because ITS infrared absorption bands, unlike those of CO2, aren't already being mostly absorbed by the existing atmospheric gas, so adding a little does a lot, rather than a tad, of additional heating.
One of Methane's bands is not significant because one of N2's overlaps it. The other has some overlap with the edge of a H2O band so humidity competes with it, making the heat it can capture vary with humidity, so comparisons to CO2 have about a factor of two slop in them. But with a 9.1 year atmospheric half life (after which most of it ends up turning to CO2 and joining that gas' multi-century decay curve), about 84x by weight higher IR absorption than CO2, and with each having one carbon but methane being lighter by a factor of 2.744 due to having four hydrogens rather than two oxygens for partners, figure a given amount of carbon will, on the average, spend its first 10 years in the atmosphere doing about 10 times as much heating if released as methane rather than CO2. So if it's ending up there either way, it's far better to burn it off. Very good to just flare it, even better to capture it and burn it as a useful fuel.
Leaks in natural gas operations generally occur where you already have infrastructure to ship and sell at a profit the methane if you can capture it. If it's a leak in the equipment that's just money flying away. So if it's a substantial leak in the equipment it pays to find and fix it.
So the satellite news that most of the emissions are from a handful of sites at natural gas operations implies that most of the leakage is from a few leaks they'd want to fix if they knew where to look for them, and the satellite surveilance now gives them a cheap way to cut the search space from "our whole operation" to "there's a few big leaks here, here, and here".
In addition to this low hanging fruit, the system can identify some large methane sources in things OTHER than natural gas infrastructure. If they're large enough, there's now a cheap way to harness them for use as fuel: A thermoacoustic liquifier: A gas burner and a chunk of plumbing that burns part of the gas (win) to get energy to turn the rest into liquified natural gas (bigger win). No moving parts but the gas, liquid, and burner gas regulator. Truck the plumbing and a big LNG storage tank out to the source, set it up and light it off, and then drive a tanker by periodically to haul off the otherwise free fuel.
Too small for that to be profitable? Then just capture it in a burner and flare it off for a cheap win.
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The wholesale price of natural gas these days is roughly $90/ton. It's going to take a lot of captured emissions to make any profit when you have to create the delivery infrastructure first, building a gas pipeline from its source out in the middle of nowhere to someplace where it can be aggregated and sent to consumers.
Which is why it's so good that:
- The bulk of the emissions appear to be a few leaks in existing natural gas infrastructure.
- A cheap, unmanned device, which can be built with
Urp. (Score:2)
It's gotta be all that borscht and Big Macs.