CH4, methane leaks and vents and flares are significant pollutants

Dear Friends & Concerned Citizens, September 15, 2020

President Trump just announced the finalization of his reckless rollback of methane pollution standards for oil and gas facilities built since 2015. Methane is 87 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time period. 25 percent of the effects of climate change we see today are caused by methane pollution.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) just recorded Summer 2020 as the hottest ever in the Northern Hemisphere. This is no time to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution standards.

Please tell your federal elected officials to publicly denounce the finalization of this dangerous backslide of public health protections and to support the lawsuit against it. Real science and direct reporting show leaks are being underreported by up to 60%, and industry production is expected to significantly increase in the next 5 years.

The EPA admits on its own website that this rollback would raise methane emissions by 370,000 tons before 2025.

This harmful rollback of critical air quality standards during a pandemic threatens the health and safety of every person in the U.S., and disproportionately Black and Brown communities.

The last thing that communities already bearing a heavier public health burden need is the elimination of pollution protections that keep them safe.

Tell your elected officials to denounce the finalization of this dangerous backslide … !!!

Sincerely, Joseph Otis Minott, Esq.
Executive Director and Chief Counsel
Clean Air Council — Clean Air Council

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See also: “Clean Air Council Condemns EPA’s Dangerous Rollback of Methane Protections,” August 13, 2020

PHILADELPHIA, PA (August 13th, 2020) – Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its unlawful rollback of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the oil and gas sector, directly contradicting EPA’s obligations under the Clean Air Act. The NSPS has been in full effect and successfully implemented for years now and has prevented millions of tons of methane, an extremely potent climate pollutant, from leaking into the atmosphere. The NSPS rollback has faced major opposition from the general public, scientists, health experts, and even major oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil and BP. Methane leaks at every phase across the oil and gas supply chain, and is responsible for about one quarter of the anthropogenic climate change we are experiencing today.

In addition, other harmful pollutants, including known carcinogens such as benzene, leak alongside methane from oil and gas operations. The 2016 NSPS required natural gas drilling companies to perform routine, commonsense inspections and repair leaks at oil and gas facilities. EPA’s unlawful rollback reduces inspection frequency substantially despite no factual basis in the record for doing so. Indeed, the evidence is clear that frequent inspections are necessary to identify leaks, that doing so is cost-effective, and that inspections actually generate substantial savings for operators.

Exxon Gas Well blowout & fire in Ohio River Valley (2/2018)

From an Article by Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times, December 16, 2019
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The first satellite designed to continuously monitor the planet for methane leaks made a startling discovery last year: A little known gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.

The findings by a Dutch-American team of scientists, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark a step forward in using space technology to detect leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, from oil and gas sites worldwide.

The scientists said the new findings reinforced the view that methane releases like these, which are difficult to predict, could be far more widespread than previously thought.

“We’re entering a new era. With a single observation, a single overpass, we’re able to see plumes of methane coming from large emission sources,” said Ilse Aben, an expert in satellite remote sensing and one of the authors of the new research. “That’s something totally new that we were previously not able to do from space.”

Scientists also said the new findings reinforced the view that methane emissions from oil installations are far more widespread than previously thought.

The blowout, in February 2018 at a natural gas well run by an Exxon Mobil subsidiary in Belmont County, Ohio, released more methane than the entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year, the research team found. The Ohio episode triggered about 100 residents within a one-mile radius to evacuate their homes while workers scrambled to plug the well.

At the time, the Exxon subsidiary, XTO Energy, said it could not immediately determine how much gas had leaked. But the European Space Agency had just launched a satellite with a new monitoring instrument called Tropomi, designed to collect more accurate measurements of methane.

“We said, ‘Can we see it? Let’s look,’” said Steven Hamburg, a New York-based scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund, which had been collaborating on the satellite project with researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Natural gas production has come under increased scrutiny because of the prevalence of leaks of methane — the colorless, odorless main component of natural gas — from the fuel’s supply chain.

When burned for electricity, natural gas is cleaner than coal, producing about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane escapes into the atmosphere before being burned, it can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

The satellite’s measurements showed that, in Ohio in the 20 days it took for Exxon to plug the well, about 120 metric tons of methane an hour were released. That amounted to twice the rate of the largest known methane leak in the United States, from an oil and gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, Calif., in 2015, though that event lasted longer and had higher emissions overall.

The Ohio blowout released more methane than the reported emissions of the oil and gas industries of countries like Norway and France, the researchers estimated. Scientists said the measurements from the Ohio site could mean that other large leaks are going undetected.

“When I started working on methane, now about a decade ago, the standard line was: ‘We’ve got it under control. We’re managing it,’” Dr. Hamburg said. “But in fact, they didn’t have the data. They didn’t have it under control, because they didn’t understand what was actually happening. And you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

An Exxon spokesman, Casey Norton, said that the company’s own scientists had scrutinized images and taken pressure readings from the well to arrive at a smaller estimate of the emissions from the blowout. Exxon is in touch with the satellite researchers, Mr. Norton said, and has “agreed to sit down and talk further to understand the discrepancy and see if there’s anything that we can learn.”

“This was an anomaly,” he said. “This is not something that happens on any regular basis. And we do our very best to prevent this from ever happening.” An internal investigation found that high pressure had caused the well’s casing, or internal lining, to fail, Mr. Norton said. After working with Ohio regulators on safety improvements, he said, the well is now in service.

Miranda Leppla, head of energy policy at the Ohio Environmental Council, said there had been complaints about health issues — throat irritation, dizziness, breathing problems — among residents closest to the well. “Methane emissions, unfortunately, aren’t a rare occurrence, but a constant threat that exacerbates climate change and can damage the health of Ohioans,” she said.

Scientists said that a critical task was now to be more quickly able to sift through the tens of millions of data points the satellite collects each day to identify methane hot spots. Studies of oil fields in the United States have shown that a small number of sites with high emissions are responsible for the bulk of methane releases.

So far, detecting and measuring methane leaks has involved expensive field studies using aircraft and infrared cameras that make the invisible gas visible. In a visual investigation published last week, The New York Times used airborne measurement equipment and advanced infrared cameras to expose six so-called super emitters in a West Texas oil field.

In a separate paper published in October, researchers detailed the use of two satellites to detect and measure a longer-term leak of methane from a natural gas compressor station in Turkmenistan, in Central Asia. Researchers estimated emissions from the site to be roughly comparable to the overall release from the Aliso Canyon event.
The leak has now stopped, satellite readings show, after the researchers raised the alarm through diplomatic channels.

“That’s the strength of satellites. We can look almost everywhere in the world,” said Dr. Aben, a senior scientist at the Dutch space institute in Utrecht and an author on both papers.

There are limitations to hunting for methane leaks with satellite technology. Satellites cannot see beneath clouds. Scientists must also do complex calculations to account for the background methane that already exists in the earth’s atmosphere.

Still, satellites will increasingly be able to both rapidly detect large releases and shed light on the rise in methane levels in the atmosphere, which has been particularly pronounced since 2007 for reasons that still aren’t fully understood. Fracking natural-gas production, which accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, has been studied as one possible cause.

“Right now, you have one-off reports, but we have no estimate globally of how frequently these things happen,” Dr. Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund said. “Is this a once a year kind of event? Once a week? Once a day? Knowing that will make a big difference in trying to fully understand what the aggregate emissions are from oil and gas.”

Video — The Ohio disaster leaked as much methane as the entire oil and gas industries of some nations release in a year.

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See also: This So-Called Bridge Fuel ‘Leads to Hell’: Blowout at ExxonMobil Fracking Site Among Nation’s Worst-Ever Methane Leaks, Common Dreams News, Jessica Corbett, December 17, 2019

New data about the 2018 incident sparks fresh warnings about the dangers of natural gas and renewed calls for a rapid transition to renewable energy.

Wanted — More Places to Pollute the Atmosphere

To the Editor, Morgantown Dominion Post, October 2, 2019

The plan to expand the Longview Power Plant with a gas-fired plant (Dominion Post — September 13) is disturbing. The company wants the Monongalia County Commission to approve a huge tax break, a PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) instead of assessed property taxes.

Another fossil fuel plant means even more air and water pollution, resulting in higher health expenses. While natural gas claims to burn cleanly, fracking is not a clean process. Fracking pads leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and generate millions of gallons of toxic waste water. There is no such thing as clean fossil fuels.

Longview is an electric wholesale plant, so all the energy generated there goes into the national grid and is not necessarily consumed here. Nor will it make our rates any cheaper. That Longview filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2013, two years after it went online, does not instill confidence for future performance.

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute, “continued investments in gas-fired power plants will present stranded cost risk for customers, shareholders, and society, while locking in 100 million tons of CO2 emissions each year. RMI research shows that ‘clean energy portfolios’ comprised of wind, solar, and energy storage technologies are now cost-competitive with new natural gas power plants, while providing the same grid reliability services.

Children around the world are begging us to protect their future. Why should we invest in fossil energy sources that are guaranteed to rob them of it? We should not give tax breaks and incentives to fossil fuel industries. The Mon County Commission has an opportunity to say YES to the children by saying YES to solar energy but NO to another fossil fuel plant.

Betsy Lawson, Morgantown

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See also: Wanted: More Places to Burn Natural Gas – A FracTracker Guest Article, Alison Grass, Food & Water Watch, April 21, 2017

https://www.fractracker.org/2017/04/gas-fired-power-plant/

Marcellus drilling operation at Morgantown Industrial Park in Monongahela River valley

From an Article by Sharon Kelly, DeSmogBlog, January 16, 2018

Over the past few years, natural gas has become the primary fuel that America uses to generate electricity, displacing the long-time king of fossil fuels, coal. In 2019, more than a third of America’s electrical supply will come from natural gas, with coal falling to a second-ranked 28 percent, the Energy Information Administration predicted this month, marking the growing ascendency of gas in the American power market.

But new peer-reviewed research adds to the growing evidence that the shift from coal to gas isn’t necessarily good news for the climate.

A team led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the oil and gas industry is responsible for the largest share of the world’s rising methane emissions—which are a major factor in climate change—and in the process the researchers resolved one of the mysteries that has plagued climate scientists over the past several years.

Missing Methane

That mystery? Since 2006, methane emissions have been rising by about 25 teragrams (a unit of weight so large that NASA notes you’d need more than 200,000 elephants to equal one teragram) every year. But when different researchers sought to pinpoint the sources of that methane, they ran into a problem.

If you added the growing amounts of methane pollution from oil and gas to the rising amount of methane measured from other sources, like microbes in wetlands and marshes, the totals came out too high—exceeding the levels actually measured in the atmosphere. The numbers didn’t add up.

It turns out, there was a third factor at play, one whose role was underestimated, NASA’s new paper concludes, after reviewing satellite data, ground-level measurements and chemical analyses of the emissions from different sources.

A drop in the acreage burned in fires worldwide between 2006 and 2014 meant that methane from those fires went down far more than scientists had realized. Fire-related methane pollution dropped twice as much as previously believed, the new paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, reports.

Using this data, “the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year,” NASA said in a Jan. 2 press release. “The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year—the same as the observed increase.”

“A fun thing about this study was combining all this different evidence to piece this puzzle together,” lead scientist John Worden of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said in a statement.

Shale Boom, Methane Boom

Less fun, unfortunately: the implications for the climate. Methane is a major greenhouse gas, capable of trapping 86 times as much heat as the same amount of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after it hits the Earth’s atmosphere. So relatively tiny amounts of methane in the air can pack a massive climate-changing punch.

“The sharp increase in methane emissions correlates closely with the U.S. fracking boom,” said Jim Warren, executive director of the climate watchdog group NC WARN. “Leaking and venting of unburned gas—which is mostly methane—makes natural gas even worse for the climate than coal.”

The new NASA study is not the first to call attention to the connection between oil and gas and methane leaks. A study in March last year found that natural gas power plants put out between 20 and 120 times more methane pollution than previously believed, due in part to accidental leaks and in part to deliberate “venting” by companies. And as far back as 2011, researchers from Cornell University warned that switching over from coal to gas could be a grave mistake where climate change is concerned.

The NASA study may help settle the science on the oil and gas industry’s role in rising methane emissions.

To conduct their research, the scientists examined the methane molecules linked to different sources, focusing on carbon isotopes in the molecules, which helped them match the methane to different sources. Methane molecules rising from wetlands and farms have a relatively small concentration of heavy carbon isotopes, oil and gas-linked methane higher amounts, and methane from fires the most heavy carbon. The scientists also cross-checked their findings by looking at other associated gases, like ethane and carbon monoxide—and the numbers all fell into place.

It turns out that fires worldwide burned up roughly 12 percent less acreage during 2007 to 2014, compared to the prior roughly half-dozen years—but the amount of methane from those fires fell more sharply, plunging nearly twice as fast, measurements from NASA’s Terra and Aura satellites revealed.

“There’s been a ping-pong game of explanations going back and forth about what might explain this,” Penn State University atmospheric scientist Ken Davis told Mashable. “It’s a complicated puzzle with a lot of parts, but [the study's conclusions] do seem plausible and likely.”

That 2006-2014 lull in fires may be part of a larger trend. Historically, “burning during the past century has been lower than at any time in the past 2000 years,” one 2016 study points out, due in large part to the spread of fire suppression techniques.

But don’t expect the lower methane emissions from less burning worldwide to last forever. One of the impacts of climate change is to make large wildfires more likely, the Union of Concerned Scientists points out.

“Wildfire seasons (seasons with higher wildfire potential) in the United States are projected to lengthen, with the southwest’s season of fire potential lengthening from seven months to all year long,” the group said. “Additionally, wildfires themselves are likely to be more severe.”

In the meantime, even while fires declined worldwide, methane emissions overall have continued to rise sharply—and, according to NASA’s latest research, it turns out pollution linked to the oil and gas industry is responsible for the biggest chunk of that growing problem.

Stop Eminent Domain Abuse

From an Article by Ken Ward Jr., Charleston Gazette Mail , November 2, 2017

As the state Department of Environmental Protection paves the way for the project, developers of the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline are suing hundreds of landowners in West Virginia and Virginia to gain easements through eminent domain rights granted to MVP by a federal regulatory approval.

MVP lawyers have filed complaints in U.S. District Court in Charleston and Roanoke to obtain through condemnation the rights of way for the 300-mile natural gas pipeline from Wetzel County, West Virginia, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia.

The Virginia complaint lists more than 300 separate pieces of property — with the property descriptions taking up 192 pages of a 196-page complaint — and the West Virginia filing lists more than 140 separate property parcels.

“Condemnation is necessary because MVP has been unable to negotiate mutually agreeable easement agreements with the landowners,” the MVP lawyers said in both of their complaints.

In courts in both West Virginia and Virginia, MVP lawyers are seeking expedited handling of their complaints. In the West Virginia case, MVP asked U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. to schedule a hearing on or before December 13th so it can access properties by February and so the pipeline can be built and in operation by November or December of 2018.

Lawyers for the company argue that “delaying access to the easements condemned across the defendants’ properties will cause irreparable harm to the public and to MVP.”

The MVP legal filings say the company is entitled to “permanent and exclusive rights-of-way of 50 feet in width” for the pipeline, as well as ingress and egress with permanent and temporary roads “which MVP may construct, improve, maintain, or replace as necessary or convenient,” and the “right to clear trees, brush, or other vegetation as necessary or convenient for the safe and efficient construction, operation, or maintenance of the pipeline or access roads.”

Also, according to the MVP filings, the easements prohibit the landowners from changing the depth of cover over the pipeline, putting any temporary or permanent structures — including sidewalks, trees, or sheds — on the easements, or storing any materials of any kind on the rights-of-way.

MVP has been somewhat stymied by a November 2016 state Supreme Court ruling that said West Virginia law would not allow the company to use state eminent domain to conduct pipeline survey work without permission from landowners. Earlier this year, the natural gas industry asked the Republican-controlled Legislature to pass a bill to overturn that Supreme Court ruling, but the measure never made it out of committee in the House of Delegates.

But approval last month by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission of a certificate of “public convenience and necessity” gave MVP federal eminent domain powers to take private property for the project, one of multiple pipelines proposed across Appalachia as part of the rush to take advantage of the natural gas boom in the Marcellus and Utica shale region. And the decision by DEP Secretary Austin Caperton on Wednesday to waive West Virginia’s authority over the water quality impacts of the FERC certificate removed one of the potential stumbling blocks for MVP in quickly winning its lawsuits against state landowners.

In an order entered Wednesday, Copenhaver expressed concern about the “vast number of defendants” in the MVP case, and ordered the company to submit by November 8th a report detailing how each of the landowners had been served with the lawsuit. The judge said he would not set a hearing until he was “assured” that the service had been handled properly.

Kayakers join protest near Paw Paw, WV

From an Article by Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post, August 6, 2017

HANCOCK, MD — Activists with the Potomac Riverkeeper Network set up at Paw Paw Tunnel Campground near Oldtown, Md., for a weekend paddle and protest over TransCanada’s planned natural gas pipeline.

The pipeline that TransCanada wants to build is short, 3.5 miles, cutting through the narrowest part of Maryland. It would duck briefly under the Potomac River at this 1,500-resident town, bringing what business leaders say is much-needed natural gas to the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

But environmentalists say that brief stretch could jeopardize the water supply for about 6 million people, including most of the Washington-metropolitan area.

That’s why dozens of protesters have gathered each weekend this summer at various points along the upper Potomac, part of a growing national movement that opposes both oil and natural gas pipelines and wants businesses and governments to embrace green energy instead.

Inspired by the Dakota Access oil pipeline protest at Standing Rock, N.D., and the broad wave of demonstrations that has energized the left since President Trump’s inauguration, the protesters hope to persuade Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his environment secretary to stop the pipeline, which got an enthusiastic green light from West Virginia.

“It’s got me worried,” said Andy Billotti, 53, who wore a T-shirt from April’s Peoples Climate March in Washington as he erected his tent at the Paw Paw Tunnel Campground near Oldtown, Md., for one recent protest. “If something were to happen, that fracked poison would come down the river . . . right into our wells.”

Opponents gathered at the ­McCoys Ferry campsite in Clear Spring, Md., over the weekend and will be at Taylors Landing next weekend. The protest at Taylors Landing, near Sharpsburg, Md., is slated to include state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), a gubernatorial candidate and the latest of a handful of politicians to take part.

The activists want Hogan, who this year banned fracking in Maryland, to deny TransCanada a water quality permit to cross the Potomac. Environment Secretary Ben Grumbles said the state has sought additional information about the project from the company and will schedule a public hearing on the permit application in coming weeks.

About 40 other permits are also needed, including ones from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Park Service, because the pipeline would also go under the C&O Canal.

Industry and economic development officials say the pipeline is safe and sorely needed to attract new employers to the West Virginia panhandle.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of gas lines like this in the Washington, D.C., area,” Eric Lewis, president of the Jefferson County Development Authority (JCDA), told about 60 protesters in July at a town council meeting in Shepherdstown, W.Va. “If people have issues with fracking, they should take it up somewhere else.”

West Virginia’s Public Service Commission already granted its utility, Mountaineer Gas, approval to begin building the distribution pipeline from Berkeley Springs to Martinsburg. Bulldozers are at work. The utility plans to eventually extend that line to Charles Town and Shepherdstown.

The natural gas that runs through the area’s existing pipeline is entirely spoken for since the opening of a Procter & Gamble manufacturing plant near Martinsburg, Mountaineer Gas officials said.

“You’ve got to have an industrial base to provide employment,” said West Virginia Commerce Secretary H. Wood Thrasher. “Without gas service, we are dead in the water.” He said the state has lost a “significant” number of companies interested in moving to the eastern panhandle because of the lack of natural gas service.

The JCDA has been working on getting natural gas service to the region for “decades,” said John Reisenweber, the authority’s executive director. More recently, it has encouraged the development of renewable green energy, such as wind and solar. But manufacturers, commercial and some residential developers insist on natural gas, he said.

While gas pipelines have crisscrossed the country since the 1920s, the number of approved interstate lines has spiked in recent years, driven by the boom in natural gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing. Protests have spiked, too.

New Yorkers convinced their state environmental agency twice in the past two years to deny a water quality certificate for natural gas pipelines. Federal authorities shut down a much-criticized Ohio pipeline in May, after 18 leaks spilled more than 2 million gallons of drilling fluid, adversely impacting the water quality. Catholic nuns near Lancaster, Pa., have built an outdoor chapel in an attempt to stop another pipeline.

In Virginia, two disputes over much larger proposed pipelines have become a hot-button political issue in the governor’s race.

The nation’s 2.3 million-mile pipeline network is considered the safest way to move oil, and the only feasible way to transport natural gas. Natural gas pipeline leaks are down 94 percent since 1984, the industry says. But accidents do happen — an average of 299 significant incidents in each of the past five years, according to federal data.

TransCanada spokesman Scott Castleman noted that his company and its predecessors have a century of experience in the region. The proposed eight-inch diameter pipeline would be buried up to 100 feet beneath the riverbed, with walls twice as thick as required, and constant monitoring for leaks and surges. A dozen TransCanada pipelines safely cross the Potomac River elsewhere in Maryland, Castleman said.

“More and more, people realize that each of these [pipeline] projects deepens our commitment to fossil fuels, locking us in for 40 or 50 more years,” said Bill McKibben, a well-known environmentalist and author. “The scientific verdict on natural gas has changed, and changed dramatically, in the past half-decade.”

The major component in natural gas is methane, which is significantly more efficient at trapping heat — and warming the planet — than carbon dioxide. A study published last year by Harvard University researchers found that emissions from methane have increased significantly since fracking began, although the researchers said they could not readily attribute the increase to fracking.

Members and friends of the Potomac Riverkeeper Network attended the July paddle to raise awareness about the pipeline project. Environmentalists also point to the geology of the upper Potomac. The land beneath the river in this region is karst, a term for a terrain that is full of fractures, caves and pools, where special precautions are needed when building pipelines to avoid spillage of chemicals or gas into the water supply.

“Unless you have an X-ray of the ground, you never know where the water goes, or where it comes from,” said Stephanie Siemek, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Appalachian Laboratory in Frostburg, Md., who led a tour of the Paw Paw Tunnel for the environmentalists camping nearby in July. “You don’t know how old it is, or where it’s derived. It might start from a mountaintop, but we don’t know how it gets to a spring.”

Potomac River in eastern WV panhandle

Partners: Google, EDF & Peoples Gas

From an Article by Kara Holsopple, The Allegheny Front, November 18, 2016

This past week, I squished into the backseat of a Google Street View car with Karin Tuxen-Bettman. She manages the Google Earth Outreach program, and she traveled to Pittsburgh from California to demonstrate how a handful of these specially outfitted hatchbacks are helping to fight climate change.

Almost everyone living in a city has seen the Google fleet riding up and down streets, cameras mounted on their hoods. They collect that data that gives Google Maps users a 360-degree view of roads and neighborhoods. But we’re riding in one of four cars that are pulling double duty, because they’re also mapping methane leaks from gas pipelines underneath the streets in 11 cities across the country.

“As we’re driving along, we will be picking up methane concentrations from different sources,” Tuxen-Bettman says.

LISTEN: How Google Street View Cars are Detecting Methane Leaks — Audio Player

Our driver tools around the morning rush in Downtown Pittsburgh, minding his own business and looking out for traffic. But a clear tube under the front bumper of the car is taking in air. It runs inside, along the door and into the trunk. That’s where the analyzer lives.

It’s silver, the size of a couple of shoe boxes and is making a chugging noise. But this rather expensive, research-grade piece of equipment detects methane—the main ingredient in natural gas and a major contributor to global warming. It also picks up on the ethane in gas. It’s the relationship between the two that Tuxen-Bettman says indicates if the methane is coming from the city’s old natural gas infrastructure.

She leans forward and reads two jagged, parallel lines on a monitor that’s mounted in the front seat. “In that last couple minutes, it looks like we did pass some emissions of methane, but I don’t see a corresponding ethane leak, so it’s possible that that could have been emissions from a sewer manhole.”

All of this data is uploaded to the great Google Cloud in the sky and run through an algorithm. Scientists at Colorado State University analyze the results, and if a methane leak from a gas line is suspected, the Google Street View car is instructed to sweep through the area again—just to be sure.

WATCH VIDEO: “Mapping the Invisible”

Google is partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund and Peoples Gas on this project to see where and how much methane is escaping in Pittsburgh.

“Pennsylvania is an important place to do this because it has the largest amount of leak-prone pipe of any state in the country,” says Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.

He spoke earlier, before the test drive, at a briefing in a nearby hotel about the initial pilot project in Pittsburgh. It covers an area stretching across a few neighborhoods, including Downtown, and found 200 leaks—most small, a few big—in a little over 300 miles of pipes. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, almost half of the gas lines in the city are more than 50 years old.

Peoples Gas is already working on a multi-billion-dollar effort to replace these old pipes. In the past, they’ve classified which ones they should yank out first based on things like safety or how well the pipes are performing. But Ed Palumbo, vice president of reliability at Peoples Gas, says the quantity of methane leaking from pipes wasn’t really part of the equation. They simply didn’t have the technology.

“We’re able to take this additional data point, and bring it into our own risk rankings that our engineering group does to help schedule and prioritize those pipeline replacements over the next 20 years,” Palumbo says.

In Pittsburgh, the pilot project found 200 leaks—most small (yellow), a few big (red)—in a little over 300 miles of pipes. Pennsylvania has the most aging, leak-prone pipes of any state in the country. Map courtesy Environmental Defense Fund

The utility’s goal is to quickly and efficiently become more like Indianapolis—another city mapped by the project—where methane leaks are few and far between. Peoples Gas actually contacted the Environmental Defense Fund to get the project rolling in Pittsburgh, and their data are accessible to utilities, regulators and the public.

And what’s in it for Google? Back inside the Street View car, Karin Tuxen-Bettman says they like trying new things. “This is something that I think everybody cares about—environmental air quality and climate change,” Tuxen-Bettman says. “If we can help with the technology piece and partner with organizations that can make an impact on the ground, then it’s a win-win for everybody.”

The project is expanding into more Pittsburgh neighborhoods with help from Carnegie Mellon University. Tuxen-Bettman says Google’s looking into whether it’s feasible for more of their cars to carry the methane sensing equipment. And she hopes someday soon, the cars will do triple duty—by mapping other invisible pollutants in the air, like ozone and fine particulate matter.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Non-Profit Groups Depend Upon Public Support

Experts find that large long-distance pipelines aren’t needed

Commentary Published in the Roanoke Times, Greg Buppert, October 9, 2016

The Mountain Valley Pipeline would slash through 300 miles of countryside starting in Wetzel County, West Virginia, and ending in the middle of Pittsylvania County.

It would dip into the Old Dominion at Giles County, where crews would carve a construction corridor 125 feet wide through five Virginia counties, forcing our neighbors to negotiate away full use of their lands. If they decline, the pipeline companies would seize the easements in court once the project is approved.

Add this to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the scar would stretch more than 800 miles across farms and forests, mountains and meadows. Homeowners are worried for their neighborhoods; business owners for their livelihoods.

Proponents declare these projects are needed to keep the lights on and homes heated. Many regulators appear to be taking the utilities at their word. They shouldn’t.

In 2015, the Department of Energy reported that using existing pipelines in our region could reduce the need for new ones. Now new evidence suggests the highly controversial Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines are, in fact, not needed.

A recent report from Synapse Energy Economics revealed that, with upgrades and modification, the existing system of underground pipelines and other gas infrastructure could supply our region’s natural gas needs at least through 2030.

The energy researchers conclude: “[T]he supply capacity of the Virginia-Carolinas region’s existing natural gas infrastructure is more than sufficient to meet expected future peak demand.”

So far, the only information about the need for the MVP and the ACP has come from the developers. Now independent experts have delved into the core supply-and-demand argument for the proposed pipelines. They calculated our region’s future wintertime peak demand for natural gas, and whether the current system can suffice.

Synapse overestimated demand by assuming renewable energy lags in the future, and that a greater number of coal-fired power plants are replaced with natural gas facilities. Even under that worst-case scenario, Synapse showed the current network of pipelines is adequate.

The existing system can deliver 300 million cubic feet (MMcf) per hour to Virginia and the Carolinas. Planned upgrades to one pipeline, and a reversal in flow of another, double that volume. Add to that the capacity of known storage facilities inside the region, and Synapse concluded the current system can move enough natural gas to easily handle the future “peak hour” demand on our coldest days.

Not surprisingly, Dominion Virginia Power dismisses the report. But what is surprising is the company’s fact-challenged attack.

First, Dominion says Synapse experts should have considered peak demand as the benchmark, which is the exact measure the researchers used. And second, Dominion claims because researchers weren’t privy to the full capacity of natural gas storage, the conclusion is unreliable. In reality, if there is storage beyond what the researchers considered, that only bolsters the report’s merit.

The pipelines’ investors do have reasons to disparage dissenters. Projects like these deliver not only gas, but also handsome financial returns for the developers. In most cases, utility customers pay the bill – they don’t have a choice – and federal rules guarantee investors a healthy reward.

This is a system that encourages overbuilding, even when cheaper alternatives like existing pipelines make sense. And it is a system that can trap the region in fossil-fuel dependence even longer.

The pipelines would last 80 years, and with so much time and money pored into them, utilities will have a powerful incentive to thwart meaningful pursuits of renewable energy, like solar power.

We do want to be clear about one thing: Shuttering coal-fired power plants is good for the environment. But natural gas is still a fossil fuel. It’s finite, and it is not without environmental consequences. Proponents tout it as a bridge fuel that helps move us from coal to more reliable and renewable energy sources.

But if these pipelines are built, we could be stuck with this fossil fuel as our chief option until the year 2100. That’s a mighty long bridge.

The Synapse report reveals we have better, less damaging options than new pipelines across our mountains, something the utilities have yet to concede. It raises critical questions that must be answered before these projects are approved.

We need a meaningful dialog about these pipeline proposals centered not so much on where they should go, but whether they should go anywhere at all.

NOTE: Greg Buppert is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Natural Gas Flaring is Irresponsible

Federal Government Targeting Methane Flaring

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, January 23, 2016

Wheeling, WV – Federal officials on Friday announced new regulations cracking down on flaring, venting and leaking of methane in natural gas drilling operations.

Natural gas producers flare or vent enough methane from public lands each year to provide service for every household in Dallas and Denver, according to the Department of the Interior. Not only does the department’s Bureau of Land Management find flaring wasteful, the agency said methane is 25 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide when it leaks into the atmosphere.

“I think most people would agree that we should be using our nation’s natural gas to power our economy – not wasting it by venting and flaring it into the atmosphere,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. “We need to modernize decades-old standards to reflect existing technologies so that we can cut down on harmful methane emissions and use this captured natural gas to generate power and provide a return to taxpayers, tribes and states for this public resource.”

As the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan – aimed at curbing carbon emissions from power plants by 32 percent by 2030 – proceeds, both the EPA and Department of the Interior are targeting methane, as well. Obama administration officials want to cut methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry 45 percent by 2025.

Methane is the primary component in the consumer product commonly referred to as natural gas. In December 2014, an unknown amount of methane leaked into the atmosphere over a 10-day period when the wellhead blew off at a Magnum Hunter operation in Monroe County.

Moreover, processing plants, compressor stations and well sites throughout the Upper Ohio Valley often feature flare systems that can release methane into the air. However, the product is significantly more harmful to the environment if it is released without burning, such as in a vent or leak.

“It’s time to modernize our regulations to reflect today’s technologies and meet today’s priorities,” said Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze. “By asking operators to take simple, commonsense actions to reduce waste – like swapping out old equipment and checking for leaks – we expect to cut this waste almost in half.

“The gas saved would be enough to supply every household in the cities of Dallas and Denver combined – every year.”

The proposed rules would require producers to adopt currently available technologies, processes and equipment that would limit the rate of flaring on public land, while compelling them to periodically inspect their operations for leaks, and to replace outdated equipment that vents large quantities of gas into the air.

Operators would also be required to limit venting from storage tanks and use “best practices” to limit gas loss when removing liquids from wells.

Industry leaders, however, said the new regulations could stifle energy development.

“Another duplicative rule at a time when methane emissions are falling – and on top of an onslaught of other new BLM and EPA regulations – could drive more energy production off federal lands. That means less federal revenue, fewer jobs, higher costs for consumers, and less energy security,” said Erik Milito, director of upstream and industry operations for the Washington, D.C.-based American Petroleum Institute.

“We share the desire to reduce emissions and are leading efforts because capturing more natural gas helps us deliver more affordable energy to consumers. The incentive is built-in, and existing BLM guidelines already require conservation.”

Michael Brune, executive director for the Sierra Club environmental interest group, hailed the action as an important step to “end all fossil fuel extraction” on public lands.

However, some believe more drastic steps are needed to end drilling on public lands.

“The president should put a moratorium on fracking on public land just like he put a moratorium on coal leases,” said Linda Capato Jr., fracking campaign coordinator for the group 350.org.

See also:  www.Marcellus-Shale.us

Dominion Resources Atlantic Coast Pipeline & Cove Point LNG Projects Progressing

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, August 31, 2015

Wheeling, WV — Officials with Dominion Resources continue working to complete the $5 billion, 42-inch diameter, Atlantic Coast Pipeline that will ship natural gas southward from West Virginia to North Carolina, in addition to the $3.8 billion Cove Point natural gas exporting site in Maryland.

To Tim Greene, owner of Land and Mineral Management of Appalachia and a former WV Department of Environmental Protection inspector, getting both these projects up and running is vital to boosting prices for Marcellus and Utica Shale material.

“The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the ET Rover Pipeline, the Mountain Valley Pipeline. We’ve got to get these up and running,” Greene said of the large interstate pipelines that are all in various stages of development. “The business is in the pipelines now.”  Still, all three of these projects are probably more than one year away from opening. Greene said producers likely will just have to make due in the meantime.

According to Dominion Chairman, President and CEO Thomas Farrell II, the firm is getting closer to filing for an official Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, adding he hopes the company can do this in September. “Our Cove Point liquefaction project is also progressing on time and on budget. The project overall is about 31 percent complete and engineering at 90 percent is nearly complete,” Farrell said.

Mountain Valley Pipeline, an EQT Corp. project, would run 330 miles southward from the MarkWest Energy Mobley complex in Wetzel County to the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co. Zone 5 compressor station 165 in Virginia. The Rover Pipeline, meanwhile, will carry natural gas from northern West Virginia across Ohio and into Michigan.

Dominion operates the Blue Racer Natrium complex in Marshall County, as well as other natural gas processing infrastructure in both Ohio and West Virginia, which will now be part of the network used to send material to Cove Point for export so the gas can be shipped throughout the world, particularly to Asia.

Earlier this year, U.S. Department of Energy officials said they extensively and carefully reviewed Dominion’s project before signing off on it. Despite protests, the energy officials said exporting 770 million cubic feet per day from Cove Point for a period of 20 years is “not inconsistent with the public interest.”

“Once we get Cove Point, we can get new markets. It you don’t have markets, there’s no need for gas,” Greene said.

“The Cove Point facility has been on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay as an LNG import terminal for nearly 40 years,” Dominion Energy President Diane Leopold said. “While we are making a substantial investment to add export capabilities, we intend to keep unchanged our commitment to being a good neighbor and responsible steward of the environment.”

Dominion also increased its earnings for the period of April 1 through June 30. The Richmond, Va. firm’s profit jumped to $429 million, which is up from $361 million during the same time frame last year.

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NOTE: See also the Mid-Atlantic Responsible Energy Project (MARE Project), the Friends of Nelson (Nelson County, Virginia), and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

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CD Collins Offers Personal Story of Injuries from Pipeline Explosion

From an Article by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, ohvec.org, August 31, 2015

CD Collins’ new novel Afterheat is loosely autobiographical and includes a pivotal experience in her life — when a pipeline explosion melted her skin.

From Kentucky, artist CD Collins has long been in contact with and support of OVEC. Her album Clean Coal Big Lie is like a soundtrack for our work.

She’s not only educating folks about the toll from coal. CD has a very personal and painful message about pipeline safety that folks fighting pipelines in their communities ought to hear and see, no matter how heartbreaking this is to watch.

The story of CD’s injury is included in the inspiring new documentary The End of the Line, which documents a diverse coalition of Kentucky farmers, families and faith-based activists as they work together to halt the proposed Bluegrass Pipeline.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net