Research shows that oil fields release much more methane than thought

Oil and gas producers in major oil fields in the United States may be emitting three times as much planet-warming methane gas as official estimates, according to new research published Wednesday. undercounted.

In some parts of New Mexico, more than 9 percent of the natural gas produced escaped into the atmosphere, researchers said in the study: published in the journal Nature.

Methane is the main component of natural gas and when released unburned into the atmosphere, it acts as an extremely potent greenhouse gas. It could warm the planet more than 80 times as much over 20 years as the same amount of carbon dioxide.

The release of methane – often from leaks at wells or gas processing plants, along pipelines or in other energy facilities – is bad news for global warming, which is already leading to higher sea levels, more intense storms, more intense droughts and greater energy losses. biodiversity around the world.

For the study, researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Kairos Aerospace and other labs looked at about a million measurements collected from aerial surveys over six oil and gas producing regions. Using these measurements, along with computer models, they found that oil and gas activities in those regions released an estimated 6.2 million tons of methane per year.

That’s almost 3 percent of the total gas these regions produce annually, or the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from the energy used by 20 million households. Expressed in dollars, this amounts to approximately a billion dollars in gas.

One conclusion from this and previous studies was “how concentrated the emissions are in a very small fraction of sites,” said Evan D. Sherwin, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who led the study. “That’s the silver lining. “If we can figure out what’s happening in this small subset of sites, we’ll be halfway to solving the methane problem in the oil and gas sector,” he said.

Scientists are increasingly turning their attention to getting better measurements of man-made methane emissions, much of which comes from the oil and gas industry. MethaneSAT, a satellite launched this month by the Environmental Defense Fund, is designed to track methane on a global scale. It is one of many satellites that can detect and measure methane from space.

The new study found that methane emissions varied widely from region to region, from 0.75 percent in Pennsylvania to more than 9 percent in parts of New Mexico. One reason for high rates in New Mexico: Operators there often drill for oil, not gas, and simply release much of the gas into the atmosphere.

Ritesh Gautam, a scientist at the EDF who was not involved in the study, said it provided important new data. He also said that more extensive measurements, including data from MethaneSAT, would soon complement these studies. “To get a complete picture, these data need to be combined with direct measurements of total methane emissions,” he said.

In a separate one analysis The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that methane emissions from the energy sector continued to reach near-record highs in 2023. But it also struck a hopeful tone, saying new steps announced in recent months could soon reduce those emissions.

For now, global methane emissions remain “far too high” to meet international climate targets, the IEA said. To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial times, a key goal of the Paris climate agreement, methane emissions from fossil fuels must fall by 75 percent this decade decrease, according to the energy agency.

The IEA analysis found that fossil fuel production and use generated almost 132 million tonnes of methane emissions last year, a small increase from the previous year. Emissions have remained at similar levels since 2019, when they hit a record. The United States, the world’s largest global producer of oil and gas, was also the largest emitter of oil and gas activities, followed by Russia.

Nearly 200 governments agreed at last year’s global climate talks in Dubai to “substantially” reduce methane emissions by 2030. Major oil and gas companies have also signed the Global Methane Pledge to curb their emissions. The Biden administration is also moving forward with rules requiring oil and gas producers to detect and repair methane leaks.

All pledges by countries and companies, fully implemented and on time, would cut methane emissions from fossil fuels by 50 percent by 2030, the IEA’s new analysis shows. However, the IEA noted that most commitments were not yet backed by concrete plans.

“I am encouraged by the momentum we have seen in recent months and that our analysis shows it could make a huge and immediate difference in the world’s fight against climate change,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA , in a statement. “Now we must focus on turning commitments into action, while raising the bar.”