skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Trump picks Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence; NY lawmakers supported House bill harmful to nonprofits; Report: Chesapeake Bay cleanup deadline looms as officials propose next phase; Michiganders rally at state capital to end prison crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Trump promises a smooth transition this time. South Dakota Sen. John Thune will lead that chamber's new majority, and one failed bill could be an omen of what a GOP trifecta in Washington will bring.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

An urban vote slump, not the rural electorate, tipped the presidential election. Minnesota voters approved more lottery money to support conservation and clean water. And a survey shows strong broadband lets rural businesses boom.

High-tech tools can bust careless oil and gas drillers

play audio
Play

Thursday, October 3, 2024   

By Jennifer Oldham for Sierra.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration


Pumps hissed, a camera oscillated, and wind whistled through oil and gas wells at the Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center at Colorado State University. The mechanical symphony could be the soundtrack to a revolution in our ability to detect and measure methane, the invisible, odorless "super pollutant" responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the world's largest producer of oil and gas and its biggest emitter of methane-much of it leaks from oil and gas operations. A raft of new federal and state laws require energy companies to monitor and fix emission leaks. That's why companies are lining up to test methane-detection devices at the Fort Collins facility.

"Things are moving quickly-people have realized legislators aren't messing around," said Ryan Brouwer, facility manager at the testing center. "We have 12 different companies testing now. I am booked until the fall, and we have a waiting list."

Brouwer showed off high-pressure tanks that feed gas into wells, other tanks, and separators. Their valves, pipe joints, and other fittings leak the methane-the main component of "natural gas"-into the air. Then finely tuned handheld sensors, softball-size devices mounted on hefty tripods, and equipment attached to drones and aircraft go to work. These sensors report their readings of the rate, location, and duration of leaks to center scientists, who then compare them with data on the known releases.

Why all the fuss? Because methane is an enormously powerful greenhouse gas, 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat. As an article from the Rocky Mountain Institute put it, "If CO2 pollution wraps one blanket around the earth, methane pollution is like wrapping the earth in over 80 blankets." Studies show that eliminating these emissions would lead to immediate benefits for the climate and public health.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere today is two-and-a-half times preindustrial levels, and accelerating. Agriculture is the largest anthropogenic source (all those belching cows, mostly), followed by oil, coal, gas, and bioenergy, which account for 46 percent of emissions. Rotting organic material in landfills is another major contributor.

Of these offenders, the emissions from fossil fuels are perhaps the easiest to deal with, as it's largely a matter of plugging leaks. According to the International Energy Agency, methane emissions from fossil fuels must drop by three-quarters this decade to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals. Hence the race at the Colorado State center to develop and improve methane-detecting sensors on the ground and in the air. As these technologies improve, scientific studies are finding that earlier calculations widely underestimated the actual amount of the gas in the atmosphere.

"We saw so much variability in methane emissions across the regions," said Evan Sherwin, who led research at Stanford University for a paper published in Nature in March. "If we compare our numbers to the Environmental Protection Agency's numbers, ours were three times higher."

Sherwin worked with a team from Stanford, Kairos Aerospace (now Insight M), and other labs to conduct aerial surveys over six hydrocarbon-producing regions, taking a million measurements over Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. They estimated that the operations emitted 6.2 million tons of methane a year-equivalent to all the CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use in Mexico.

"We found [that] as low as .05 percent of oil and gas production facilities are responsible for half or more of emissions," said Sherwin, who is now at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We really do now have the tools to find the bulk of the emissions that matter pretty rapidly."

In addition to worsening the climate crisis, methane emissions represent an annual loss of $1 billion to the gas companies. The prospect of recovering that leaking gas is incentivizing energy companies worldwide to fix methane leaks discovered by satellites. Six years ago, energy companies in the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative invested in the satellite company GHGSat; they've used the satellites to help detect and quantify leaks in Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, and Kazakhstan. After the results were confirmed with on-the-ground testing, local operators fixed the leaks, said Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, chair of OGCI's executive committee.

"Three problems we discovered were approximately equal to a million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," he said. "It's like taking away close to 250,000 cars." Methane detection and measurement, he concluded, "is now at a point where we may be able to start moving the needle at scale." Indeed, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that the methane increase in the atmosphere in 2023 slowed from the record growth earlier this decade. Even so, the year marked the fifth-highest increase since 2007.

More than a dozen satellites now orbit the planet scanning for methane plumes. Some are privately owned; others are operated by governments and nonprofits. Data from select satellites are available on the International Methane Emissions Observatory's online data portal.

Mark Brownstein is a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, which developed its own methane-detecting satellite, MethaneSat. "This is data that will provide the most comprehensive amount of emissions and the rate at which they are being emitted," he said. "We see this data as being incredibly important to hold countries and companies accountable to commitments they've made."

Satellites have limitations though. They can't see past cloud cover or over water, and they have time constraints on how much data they can collect from any one location. Consequently, said Dan Zimmerle, the director of Colorado State's methane center, all types of sensors are needed to make progress in fixing leaky oil and gas equipment and spotting flares that fail to fully combust all the gas being vented.

Zimmerle's operation is set to receive $25 million from the Department of Energy and industry partners to modernize equipment, standardize testing solutions, and support field trials of methane-sensing satellites. The team is searching for locations to test how the satellites are performing.

"We will put up a test release," Zimmerle said. "They will task on it, we will get a report from them that says what they saw, and we will compare it to the real thing."


Jennifer Oldham wrote this article for Sierra.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance was created to help preserve and protect the scenic beauty and pristine water quality of the Buffalo National River by opposing and preventing the construction and operation of industrial concentrated animal feeding operations within the Buffalo River watershed. (ODell Outside/Adobe Stock)

Environment

play sound

Members of the Buffalo River Watershed Alliance are supporting two moratoriums on concentrated animal feeding operations to be voted on today by the A…


Social Issues

play sound

President-elect Donald Trump has named Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as his nominee for Secretary of State, prompting experts to assess Rubio's …

Social Issues

play sound

Teachers' unions say they're at an impasse in bargaining with two Oregon school districts. After four intense mediation sessions, Albany teachers …


Animal-welfare groups accuse state authorities of turning a blind eye to allegations of neglect at California poultry farms. (Roibu/Adobe Stock)

Environment

play sound

A measure to end factory farming in Sonoma County has only received about 15% of the vote so far - so supporters are gathering tomorrow in Santa Rosa …

Social Issues

play sound

Hundreds of people from across Michigan gathered in Lansing this week, urging House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit and Senate Majority Leader Winnie …

The FBI is investigating a nationwide wave of harassing texts with messages referencing slavery. In Wisconsin, Black residents of all ages have reported receiving them. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

A recent wave of racist texts targeting Black Wisconsinites has sparked concerns about data privacy. The personal information people voluntarily …

Environment

play sound

In last week's election, South Dakota voters defeated the carbon pipeline law by a wide margin, but pipeline companies could still gain ground in …

Environment

play sound

President-elect Donald Trump's agenda for "energy dominance" could majorly impact leaders in the sector, including the state of Wyoming and the …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021