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Earth Science

1,000 Super-Emitting Methane Leaks Risk Triggering Climate Tipping Points 111

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 1,000 "super-emitter" sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 "methane bombs" around the world -- fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a "scary" surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say. The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to preventing methane-driven disaster, as tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions. Some leaks are deliberate, venting the unwanted gas released from underground while drilling for oil into the air, and some are accidental, from badly maintained or poorly regulated equipment.

Fast action would dramatically slow global heating as methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. An emissions cut of 45% by 2030, which the UN says is possible, would prevent 0.3C of temperature rise. Methane emissions therefore present both a grave threat to humanity, but also a golden opportunity to decisively act on the climate crisis. [...] The methane super-emitter sites were detected by analysis of satellite data, with the US, Russia and Turkmenistan responsible for the largest number from fossil fuel facilities. The biggest event was a leak of 427 tonnes an hour in August, near Turkmenistan's Caspian coast and a major pipeline. That single leak was equivalent to the rate of emissions from 67m cars, or the hourly national emissions of France. Future methane emissions from fossil fuel sites -- the methane bombs -- are also forecast to be huge, threatening the entire global "carbon budget" limit required to keep heating below 1.5C. More than half of these fields are already in production, including the three biggest methane bombs, which are all in North America.
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1,000 Super-Emitting Methane Leaks Risk Triggering Climate Tipping Points

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  • When they burp they release a ton of methane!
    That is just hard science.
    Not talking about the amount of methane in a fart!
    We should keep sheeps instead of cows to solve the environmental crisis.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday March 06, 2023 @11:40PM (#63349153)

      We should keep sheeps instead of cows to solve the environmental crisis.

      Per kg of meat, sheep are no better than cows. All ruminants burp methane.

      Chickens, pigs, and fish are better. Tofu even more so.

      • by kbahey ( 102895 )

        We should keep sheeps instead of cows to solve the environmental crisis.

        Per kg of meat, sheep are no better than cows. All ruminants burp methane.

        Chickens, pigs, and fish are better. Tofu even more so.

        Even if chicken are better than beef, the overall impact of livestock on green house gas is less than 5.8% of total.

        See the first graph here [ourworldindata.org].

        The amount of 'fugitive emissions from energy production' alone is 5.8%.
        So in theory, if we plug all the leaks from energy producers, it will completely offset our meat p

    • A cow emits around 50 kg of methane a year. So 1.4 billion cattle emit around 70 million metric tons a year of CH4. In terms of CO2e, that's about 2 billion metric tons. Global transport is 8 billion metric tons. Just CO2 is actually 30 billion metric tons from various sources. Talking in CO2e is kind of pointless, though. CO2 maintains concentrations around the world over 250x that of methane. Yet we only release 50x more carbon dioxide. That's simply a matter of methane refusing to stick around. Cow em
  • When did we start substituting "Super-Emitting" for "large," or perhaps "very large?" Even "enormous" isn't as hype.

    Oh yeah, when marketers got hold of the headlines instead of the actual news editors.

    • by higuita ( 129722 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @01:18AM (#63349263) Homepage

      Actually this is not a new term, when tracking leaks, it is refereed as emitters ... usually small quantities... but for BIG volumes is easier to say super emitters, to show how far apart they are from the other ones

    • The term has been around for a long time, not and not just referring to methane facilities. You can have superemitter cars, landfills, etc.

      The distinction between superemitters and "large" emitters is essentially where they land on a histogram of emissions from similar facilities. That histogram has a "fat tail" in that rather than looking Gaussian or lognormal, it starts off looking Gaussian then has a long trailing tail going to high emissions. The "large" emitters are on the high end of the Gaussian. The

  • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday March 06, 2023 @11:30PM (#63349139) Homepage

    Methane is the primary constituent of natural gas. You'd think with today's energy prices this would be a problem that the petroleum industry solves voluntarily in the name of greater profits.

    • you don't need to worry if you are just paying for the C4 to cause the leak.
    • by higuita ( 129722 )

      if you drill crude oil, you usually don't care much about gas, as it requires extra setup to capture it. Also the pressure control and fire hazard makes it harder for the drill setup... until not long, it was seen as a secondary product, but yes, with high prices, oil companies are looking at it with other eyes... but still take time and money to replace existent equipment.

      We are talking about oil companies, so little care about environment, they only see profit, everything else is other people problems

      • by bobby ( 109046 )

        Not speaking for OP, but my similar question is: if there's CH4 in the well, wouldn't it make sense (and dollars) to extract and sell it first, and go for the oil later?

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Not speaking for OP, but my similar question is: if there's CH4 in the well, wouldn't it make sense (and dollars) to extract and sell it first, and go for the oil later?

          No, the oil is low hanging fruit. Humans almost always go for the low hanging fruit first and think about the consequences later.

        • Re:Fuel leaks (Score:5, Informative)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @05:14AM (#63349533)

          Not speaking for OP, but my similar question is: if there's CH4 in the well, wouldn't it make sense (and dollars) to extract and sell it first, and go for the oil later?

          No. CH4 is still a comparatively expensive to extract and transport material compared to oil. What you actually find is that a lot of more environmentally conscious oil companies (that's our oxymoron of the day) will compress the CH4 and re-inject it into the well to increase well pressure for extraction of more oil. The oil is far more valuable.

          There's logistics issues too:
          A VLCC oil tanker can carry 1-2million barrels of crude oil (that's $100million worth).
          The largest LNG tankers on the market are around 200000m^3 gas equivalent (that's $15million worth at the current crazy European price).

          So unless you have a pipeline you don't exactly have a lot of ability to move methane even if you do get it out of the ground. The sheer volume of production of oil makes it a far more attractive option even at gas prices seen by Europe in Autumn.

          • by bobby ( 109046 )

            Thank you so much for the great info.

          • by higuita ( 129722 )

            Also the storage problem... Crude is liquid and more or less stable and can be stored mostly in every place with mostly "minimal" security problems... even a small leak is not that critical most of the time and can be controlled
            Gas is... well, a gas! :D
            You can convert it to liquid, but to normal pressure and temperature, it is back to be a gas...
            to store it, you need high pressure containers, that can't have any leaks, gas and air is a explosive mixture that you can not contain. So everything is much more e

            • Almost. Gas is a gas and in gas form quite nasty. But in liquid form it is actually quite easy and safe to handle. It doesn't just magic itself to gas suddenly due to the enthalpy of vaporization (same reason a pot of water doesn't instantly explode into steam at 100C but actually requires you to keep your stove on pumping more heat into it).

              You need multi-stage cooling to convert gas to LNG, but once it is in that form it's actually stored in very low pressure (~3-8 psi) storage vessels. The tanks are doub

        • Not speaking for OP, but my similar question is: if there's CH4 in the well, wouldn't it make sense (and dollars) to extract and sell it first, and go for the oil later?

          Turns out that methane is not very expensive -- at the wellhead, it's production cost is about a dollar per million cubic feet. So, if it costs more than a dollar to capture that million cubic feet for sale, it's not worth it.

          • by bobby ( 109046 )

            Wow, thank you (all). I'm part owner of a bit of land that has gas and neighboring gas wells, and pipelines. No real $ to me, but I've never been part of the business / negotiations. I'm not sure if there's petroleum further down- there may be, but for whatever reason they've been harvesting (mining?) the gas for now. Maybe someday look for petroleum...

    • You'd think with today's energy prices this would be a problem that the petroleum industry solves voluntarily in the name of greater profits.

      For that to work you need a few things:
      a) the ability to capture, convert it into a usable form, and transport it all of which requires infrastructure. Modern oil platforms are being built with gas compressors / liquification units on location, but older ones were not. Todays prices mean nothing for something built 20 years ago.
      b) you need the ability to get it to a willing customer. Sure Europe is paying a premium for gas, but in the meantime Russia can't sell it to anyone, with a very large flare running

    • Re: Fuel leaks (Score:5, Informative)

      by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @07:41AM (#63349721) Homepage

      I work in the methane emissions measurement world, and for years we tried to use "lost profits" as a way to convince operators to more aggressively pursue LDAR (leak detection and repair). But realistically, except in truly exceptional leaks like Aliso Canyon a few years ago, they don't make a dent in the profitability of the facility. Even most of these "superemitters" aren't significantly financially impacted by the leak. The company just does a cost/benefit calculation to realize that the effort to fix is more expensive than the lost profits.

      This is where regulation comes in - either forcing companies to do LDAR or fining them enough that it's worth it for them to fix the leak appears to be the only solution.

  • by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @12:41AM (#63349231) Homepage
    In other news, waves of cascading nuclear explosions will probably likely soon be lighting up the surface of this little blue pale dot drifting in space, that stands in the heavens like a single grain of sand in an beach that stretches toward the horizon on both sides. Whatever culture or learned information, as well as the aspirations, lives, and meaning will surely be lost, in the black quiet of endless ebb of time.
    • Get back on your meds & the nasty feelings will go away, I promise.
  • The only time we managed to reduce co2 emission was 2020 because of lockdown, a 7% cut and we are now higher than 2019. So no, a cut of 45% won't happen by 2030.
    • To limit the temprature rise to 1.5 C by 2100, we would need to limit the greenhouse gas emissions to 3000 billions of tons of CO2eq. Knowing we already emitted 2400 in the last 100 years, that means we have about 1/4 of what we already emitted left to emit (or 600 billions of tons). With a world population that is 2.5x-3x higher.

      To stay under 2C, the limit is 3600 billions of tons of CO2eq, so 1000 billion tons left for the next 80 years (compared to the 2400 billions already emitted in the last 100 years

      • The good news in all that, is that at some point, physics and reality will catch up:

        What you describe is not good news but the direct consequence of the things we should have tried to avoid: climate and energy crisis. The energy part doesn't seem to worry a lot of people for some reason, I bet it will hit us a lot harder than climate. These disasters will destroy our civilisation not life on earth. Resetting ecosystems doesn't seem to be a big deal in the long run maybe its good and a common event on every planets hosting life.

        • What you describe is not good news [...] These disasters will destroy our civilisation not life on earth.

          You're right, but as you may have read, never did I say it was good new *for us*.

          And actually, I believe humanity will survive anyway, even if not all of it, and not in any way we would like to.

  • by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @04:12AM (#63349457)

    I see the fossil fuel ghouls are out in force. Well, here's something for the snowflakes to chew on before cancelling me: Corporations intentionally emitting large quantities of methane have gone to war on human civilization. We should treat them accordingly.

    • by JoeRobe ( 207552 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @08:05AM (#63349769) Homepage

      Speaking as someone who's job (partially) is to go around the US and measure these superemitters, the vast majority of them don't even know they're leaking that badly. I can't speak for every superemitting facility in every country, but in the US the largest emissions are a result of upsets and malfunctioning components. When a facility operator isn't required to do regular leak checking, they don't bother. I have countless anecdotal stories of pulling up to some O&G facility, hearing the operator say "you won't find any leaks here, we run a tight ship!" The we go out and measure their leaks and say "you're emitting 2 tons/day from over there". They go over and find someone had left a valve wide open, or that the valve was broken, or that their enclosed flare had gone out, or that one of their seals had ruptured, or a thief hatch (real thing) was left open. If they had done regular, aggressive leak checking they would have found it. But they don't.

      A simple, fast, and cheap way to rapidly identify superemitters remotely, coupled with strong regulations and fines, would have a huge impact on the O&G supply chain's climate impact. That technology doesn't yet exist, but some of the newer really high spatial resolution methane imaging satellites are getting close.

      None of those efforts to find superemitters are driven by the O&G companies themselves. They just don't care. There is malice emanating from those O&G companies, but it comes in the form of indifference to the problem they're causing, and prioritizing short-term profits over long-term environmental impact. You can call that declaring war, I guess, but either way it's hard to fight that indifference.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I agree.

    • Corporations intentionally emitting large quantities of methane have gone to war on human civilization. We should treat them accordingly.

      Corporations exist to make money within the framework of the governments which regulate them, nothing more, nothing less. There's no bonus prize for being a good corporate citizen. If you want to fight a war you need to do that with your government not with the corporations. Otherwise you're fighting from a legal losing position and will get nowhere.

  • Starship testing.
  • It did strike me as a wee bit strange that despite the pandemic lockdown, which is the closest humans will get to full climate-saving behavior change, greenhouse gas emissions only went down by less than 10 percent.

    This despite virtually all cars being off the road and people doing nothing all day. So if itâ(TM)s not cars and people out and about, what is causing all the greenhouse gas emissions?

    • Individual car use may have gone down, but shipping and goods transport went up. Essential workers, like the brave hero at Chipotle who made my burrito, still had to go to work. On top of that, with everyone at home people kept their air conditioning or heating on during the day, when they otherwise would have turned it down. So I'm not sure that total energy consumption changed a whole lot, it just moved around.

    • Surprise, road transport is only 12% of the total world emissions. [ourworldindata.org]

      Which basically means we're fucked if we try to reduce just transport and adopt a "business as usual" approach for the rest, btw.

      • Surprise, road transport is only 12% of the total world emissions.

        Exactly. And of those 12%, half of it is for trucks (shipping and goods transportation). The pandemic saw a rise of those, so the reducation of greenhouse gases resulting from some people (non-essential workers, not so many of them, even if many people reading slashdot would fall into that category) not taking their individual cars was not that much.

        Overall, the CO2eq emission reduction resulting from the pandemic was between 5-7%. We would need that (on top of each other) every year until 2050 to just meet

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          and don't forget that 5-7% is a mirage as well. The economic inflation we are seeing now shows we did not destroy the demand we shifted it. Which is why we have have exceeded 2019 levels already.

          Fact is we kept all those airlines and other infrastructure afloat which has allowed a snap-back to business as usual for the most part, but its also meant that everyone who was going to take that trip but delayed it is doing so now.

          To actually accrue carbon savings on anything close to the rates required we'd need

  • 1.5 and 45% by 2030 are numbers arrived at by the bureaucrats and drunk diplomats who comprise a useless debate society. I am not impressed.
  • If you want to up your eco-anxiety to cold war "looming nuclear exchange" levels, here's your ticket: The Methane Clathrate Gun Hypothesis [csulb.edu].
    The gist is that we might have already pushed into cascading effects that are just picking up momentum and nature is ready to show us how to do climate change "epic style" and we might just be super-screwed.

    It's "just" a hypothesis, but it sure is nightmare material.

  • When are we going to wake up and realize that refried beans are a real threat?
  • After Bashing Natural Gas, Oregon Gov. Installs $300K Natural Gas Generator at Mansion.
    https://thepostmillennial.com/... [thepostmillennial.com]

  • We are doomed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TomGreenhaw ( 929233 ) on Tuesday March 07, 2023 @11:20AM (#63350355)
    I expected /. to have higher than average intelligent users. Many of the posts either denying human caused climate change or arguing "why bother" leads me to believe that our careless selfish attitude as a species will lead to a dystopian future. Enjoy it while you can - these are the good old days and it will take a miracle to make it right for future generations.
    • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      That used to be the case, but nowadays, it's a fairly small community. The moderation has become increasingly partisan and it's driven or hidden a great number of users away. /. is a dying platform.

      • My only hope is that social media in general isn't an accurate reflection of society. Whether its Reddit, /., Quora, Facebook, Nextdoor, or any others that I've reviewed and/or used I see the same general lack of critical thinking, social responsibility, and selfishness everywhere I look.

        \ () /
    • I think the higher than average intelligent people have given up on such discussions on Slashdot knowing full well that the comments will be overwhelmed by propaganda, shilling, or pointing to some thing like an artificial border in an attempt to shift blame to anyone but themselves, ignoring that a supposedly technically advanced western country like the US is standing on number on the list overall, and number 2 if you look at just oil and gas related activity.

  • Maybe we should focus on stuff like this, instead of flying private jets to global conferences where the 0.01% get to shake their finger at the rest of us for not living responsibly enough?

  • If something were done about all the super-yachts and luxury jetliners the elite use on regularity, it'd be more of a reduction in GHGs than the aggregate of all cars on the road. But that doesn't fit a narrative, so it's not even evaluated.

    Also - no mention of the pipeline from Russia which was bombed and has been spewing into the North Sea? That isn't directly spewing methane, but all the production which went into it certainly should have been a factor.

  • How much did that release?

    The elite can go fuck themselves. really.

    The internet aged has allowed these dickheads to coordinate their stupidity on a scale not capable in the past - the 'Networked Elites' are imbeciles who care only for themselves ;)

  • Pretty sure the permafrost that's trapping a lot of methane is already on it's way to defrosting and release what is essentially a methane bomb. At this point, we are definitely passing the 2c threshold and should start planning what to do after. Thinking we can avoid this is just a joke and it's beyond not funny anymore.

    Especially since so much of the rest of the world is just increasing it's greenhouse gas outputs instead of reducing.

    Guess that doesn't go along with the narrative though.

    It's the end of th

  • ...according to the predictions of Al Gore and many other climate experts. These people fly around in private jets and buy up oceanfront property which shows us how much they are really worried.

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