The New York Times images of invisible methane escaping from oil and gas wells
Energy — di Cecilia Bergamasco
An investigation by the New York Times reveals how uncontrolled methane leaks are occurring at oil and gas extraction facilities in Texas.
The New York Times images of invisible methane escaping from oil and gas wells
An investigation by the New York Times reveals how uncontrolled methane leaks are occurring at oil and gas extraction facilities in Texas.
In the United States, enormous quantities of methane are escaping from oil and gas extraction sites, contributing to climate change, while the administration led by President Donald Trump has reduced penalties for violators who can continue with impunity to install no emissions control systems on their facilities. This is what an investigation published in the newspaper New York Times finds.
The Trump administration's attempts to weaken methane regulations underestimate methane’s climate impacts & disregard evidence showing methane emissions are much higher than estimated. #methane #climatecrisis nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Methane emissions are invisible to the naked eye
If you observe one of the thousands of natural gas extraction facilities located in the American state of western Texas with the naked eye, you notice nothing unusual. But with the aid of an infrared camera, which sees what the human eye cannot, it is possible to detect the substantial methane emissions escaping from the facilities — the main component of natural gas and a powerful greenhouse gas that is contributing to warming the planet at an alarming rate.
Two New York Times journalists, aboard a small plane equipped with technical instruments, flew over the oil and natural gas sites that dot the Permian Basin, the oil field located between Texas, New Mexico and Kansas. Within a few hours, the plane's instruments had identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.
The impact of methane on climate change
Today methane is poorly regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The findings of the investigation conducted by the NY Times could shed light on the mystery behind the rise in atmospheric methane levels, which have recorded substantial growth since 2007, though the reasons remain unclear. The prime suspect is fracking for natural gas extraction, which — not coincidentally — shows a corresponding increase in methane emission levels whenever its use grows. When natural gas is burned to generate electricity, it produces roughly half the carbon dioxide that coal produces. But if methane is not burned when it is released during extraction, it disperses into the atmosphere with drastic effects, since its polluting potential in terms of the greenhouse effect is 25 times greater than that of CO2.
"It is increasingly clear that fossil fuel production has drastically increased global methane emissions," said Robert Howarth, a scientist at Cornell University and author of a study estimating that North American shale gas production could be responsible for roughly one third of the global increase in methane emissions over the past decade.
The weight of the oil lobby
The NY Times research into extraction sites and the lobbying activities of the companies that own them shows how the energy industry has pushed for less stringent federal regulations on methane emissions. It is no coincidence that the companies present in the Permian Basin are the same ones that have exerted a degree of influence on Trump in pursuit of less restrictive legislation — so much so that Trump's 2020 roadmap includes the repeal of the requirement to equip extraction facilities with methane leak detectors.