Methane and other hydrocarbons are potent greenhouse gases

From an Article by Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 13, 2020

Natural gas drillers in Pennsylvania leaked more than 1.1 million tons of methane into the air in 2017, 16 times the amount they reported to the state, according to an Environmental Defense Fund review.

The review released Wednesday morning found that fugitive emissions of methane from approximately 8,000 unconventional shale gas wells totaled 543,000 tons for 2017, not the 70,150 tons reported to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Methane emissions from almost 73,000 older, vertical, or “conventional” gas wells totaled another 599,200 tons. The PA-DEP doesn’t collect fugitive emissions data on conventional well sites.

“The fact that natural gas operators are emitting well over a million tons of methane pollution each year into the air Pennsylvanians breathe is unacceptable,” Dan Grossman, senior director of state advocacy at EDF, said in the organization’s news release. “The staggering scale of the methane problem in Pennsylvania makes Gov. Wolf’s proposal to reduce emissions from existing oil and gas operations all the more critical.”

The new EDF review builds on a July 2018 study in the peer-reviewed journal Science that found fugitive emissions of methane from wells across the U.S. in 2015 were 60% higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inventory estimate.

The new review, which uses 2017 data and emissions modeling developed for the 2018 Science study by EDF and more than 140 research and industry experts, found Pennsylvania methane emissions in 2017 were double the 2015 estimate.

“Tapping into the latest scientific research and best available data has allowed us to more accurately discern the state’s oil and gas methane emissions in a way that best reflects conditions on the ground,” Hillary Hull, EDF senior manager for research and analytics, said in the release.

The new analysis, which also projects methane emissions in the state through 2030, said those emissions will climb to 13 million tons under existing regulations, would drop to approximately 6.5 million tons if regulations were stronger and would increase to 19 million tons if they are weakened.

Gas drilling companies are required to report their fugitive emissions to the PA-DEP so the department can assess the impact of those pollutants on public health based air quality standards.

Allen Robinson, who heads the Carnegie Mellon University mechanical engineering department and helped develop the modeling used in the 2018 Science study, said the department is getting an incomplete picture of the problems posed by fugitive methane emissions.

“Methane is a serious climate issue and also a wasted resource, wasted product issue,” Mr. Robinson said. “And I don’t know why PA-DEP doesn’t measure methane emissions from conventional wells. From a climate perspective it just doesn’t make any sense.”

The EDF said methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a greenhouse gas over 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the near-term warming of the planet, which can contribute to extreme weather events, longer and hotter summers, and increased risk of Lyme disease and West Nile virus. High airborne concentrations of methane can be explosive and can cause a host of health impacts including headaches and dizziness, nausea and vomiting, loss of coordination and trouble breathing.

The EDF review also found that oil and gas operations emitted more than 63,000 tons of volatile organic compounds, which can form ozone, the primary component of unhealthy smog. VOC exposure can cause heart disease and exacerbate respiratory diseases, such as asthma and emphysema.

The Centers for Disease Control has also found that individuals living with those conditions are more at risk for severe illness from other infections, such as COVID-19, the EDF said in its release.

David Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a drilling industry advocacy organization, issued an email statement that notes “credible federal, state and independent third party organization data shows overall emissions, including methane, continue to dramatically drop as natural gas production soars. . .”

“Since methane is the very product produced and sold, operators have every incentive, especially in this historic low price environment, to capture and market natural gas,” Mr. Spigelmyer stated. “Through new technologies and best practices — such as robust leak detection and repair programs and vapor recovery systems — operators continue to make significant progress to ensure natural gas reaches market,”

The PA-DEP has been working on a new methane emissions reduction rule, and Lauren Fraley, a PA-DEP spokeswoman, said it is set to be published later this month followed by a 60-day public comment period.

“The EDF data highlights the need to reduce methane, and the Wolf administration/DEP recognizes the need to act quickly to reduce methane pollution from wells and other natural gas infrastructure,” Ms. Fraley said.

The regulation, as currently written, will reduce methane emissions by more than 75,000 tons per year, she said in an email response to questions.

“Gov. Tom Wolf and the DEP are to be commended for advancing a methane rule that addresses emissions from the state’s tens of thousands of existing oil and gas wells,” Mr. Grossman said. “It’s essential that the state adopt a strong final rule that protects public health and delivers on the governor’s promise to tackle climate change.”

But the Trump administration announced last fall it would move in the opposite direction and seek to roll back the federal methane rule.

”It is not a priority in this administration to apply methods to reduce methane emissions,” said Mr. Robinson. ”It’s really a matter of having the political will to put structural methods in place. If we wanted to, we could have an impact on the emissions totals.”

Stream monitoring research on Marcellus impacts

From an Article by Penn State University, Industrial Water World, November 20, 2018

Chemical clues in waters near Marcellus Shale gas wells in rural Pennsylvania can identify new drilling-related sources of methane contamination, according to scientists. The findings provide a new tool for distinguishing potential environmental impacts of shale drilling from pre-existing methane levels commonly found in Pennsylvania waterways, the researchers said.

Scientists also found that methane contamination may be more likely to occur when drilling takes place in certain geological settings, like those found in the study area in Lycoming County.

“This study provides new clues about where we might expect to find potential environmental impacts related to shale drilling and how to better identify new incidents after they occur,” said Joshua Woda, a graduate student in geosciences at Penn State.

Woda and a team of researchers reported the finding in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study focuses on an area where state regulators have cited multiple Marcellus Shale gas wells for well integrity issues. The nearest gas well was cited by state regulators for contaminating five residential water wells with high levels of methane. This gas poses an explosion hazard in enclosed spaces.

Methane levels remain above pre-drill conditions in stream and well water samples seven years after leaks were initially reported, researchers said.

Natural gas is primarily composed of methane, and drilling can cause the gas to escape into waterways or the atmosphere, where it is a potent greenhouse gas. Scientists think these incidents are rare compared to the overall number of shale gas wells drilled, but they are also difficult to identify.

Methane is common in Pennsylvania waterways, caused by natural sources like bogs and wetlands, as well as natural migration from deep underground rocks. This migration occurs separately from shale drilling.

“Because we lack good baseline data for water quality throughout Pennsylvania, it can be difficult to identify possible impacts of shale drilling,” said Susan Brantley, distinguished professor of geosciences at Penn State and director of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. “While we believe these incidents of gas-well leakage are rare compared to the total number of gas wells, this study gives us a new tool to identity them when they occur.”

Scientists analyzed pre- and post-drilling water samples from stream and well water around the reported leaks. They found that concentrations of some metals in the water began to rise shortly after the leaks began.

“We’ve documented that recent methane migration can change water chemistry in a way that can mobilize metals, such as iron, and release other unwanted chemical compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide,” Woda said. “This is important because it can let people know what they might expect if they are recently impacted by something like a shale gas well leaking into their water supply.”

The change in water chemistry indicates a gas plume moved into an aquifer from deep underground where horizontal drilling into shale has been accompanied by fracking. The clues could be used elsewhere to determine new leaks, researchers said.

“In other words, we have come up with new tracers that can be used with other lines of evidence to determine if a water well was impacted by recent gas migration,” Woda said. “It is especially useful for people who did not collect pre-drill water samples.”

Scientists said a high number of wells around the study area have been cited for cementing or casing violations. Drilling-related leaks are often caused by these types of construction issues.

“A high percentage of unconventional wells have received violations in this study area — about one third of the 101 producing wells — which is much higher than statewide estimates,” Woda said.

The shale formation in the area is shallow and located along the axis of a large fold. Scientists said wells there may intersect fractures that are interconnected, forming good pathways for upward migration.

“We discovered that the drilled shale is very shallow at this point and the overlying rocks are tightly folded,” Brantley said. “We think we have discovered a site where fractures in the folded rock may be helping natural gas come to the surface and that it may be accelerated by the presence of gas wells.”

Further study could provide maps of areas where drilling could be avoided or lead to better management practices that could reduce risks for methane migration, the researchers said.

Methane Leaks are Found Looking "Top Down"

Whitehall’s fracking science failure in England

From an Article by Paul Mobbs, The Ecologist, May 24, 2017

As the Conservative Manifesto portends a planning ‘free for all’ for shale gas, Talk Fracking launches its new report demonstrating the flaws in the Government’s case on fracking and climate change.

The Government’s case – detailed in the Mackay-Stone report – has been widely criticized in the past.

Research published over the last 18 months, outlined in Talk Fracking’s new report, questions the accuracy of the data used in the Mackay-Stone report. And as a result of this new information Whitehall’s climate case has arguably collapsed.

The issue here is about science and uncertainty. So first, What is ‘science’? It is a process for how we find, measure and then evaluate the real world in order to identify how it works.

The problem is, particularly for contentious debates in the media and politics, that we seldom hear about the degree of confidence attached to scientific findings, or the uncertainties that surround them. Rarely is the method by which those results were produced ever discussed.

In such an environment it is easy to use ‘results’ outside the context in which they were formed, extrpolating them to novel circumstances in a way that is scientifically invalid.

When we hear the fracking industry and academics argue over leakage figures, we might presume the issue is whether or not one or other set of figures are correct. In fact, the issue here is the method used to make those measurements, and whether or not that system of measurement produces a realistic result.

Fracking and Whitehall‘s energy policy

The Government in Whitehall (distinct from those in Edinburgh or Cardiff, who currently have moratoriums in place on shale gas development) has promoted fracking as a means to meet climate change obligations.

As Energy Secretary Ed Davey claimed in 2013, shale gas is a “bridge“ to a low carbon economy. That claim rests on the results of one report, written by the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) Chief Scientist, David Mackay, and the economist, Timothy Stone.

The Mackay-Stone report, ‘Potential Greenhouse Gas  Emissions Associated with Shale Gas Extraction and Use‘, states:

“We have gathered available information on the carbon footprint of shale gas to inform our estimate of the potential impacts of shale gas exploration, extraction and use in the UK on UK climate change objectives … With the right safeguards in place, the net effect on UK GHG emissions from shale gas production in the UK will be relatively small.”

The point at issue today is whether that process of evaluation was valid, even when the report was first published in September 2013.

‘Bottom-up’ versus ‘top-down’

How we measure and evaluate the pollution emitted by industrial processes is a compromise between what is technically possible and realistically practicable. Reliably measuring gases emitted from equipment outdoors is difficult, so it require some flexibility.

These historic difficulties mean that regulators have relied on a ‘bottom-up’ or ‘inventory’ method to assess the leaks from oil and gas operations.

Small parts of the equipment are tested, either in a laboratory or specially constructed test rigs. The leaks are measured or estimated. Finally the figures are combined in an ‘inventory’ of the system being monitored to produce a total.

When the climate impacts of oil and gas production were first assessed in the 1990s the assumption was that the effects of leakage were ‘insignificant‘.

What has happened since is that the monitoring technology has improved. Today it is possible to equip aircraft or ground vehicles as mobile gas laboratories. These are flown or driven around oil and gas fields to sniff the air. From that sampling it is possible to produce a ‘top-down’ estimate of how much gas is leaking in order to create the measured concentrations in the air.

In an ideal world the top-down and bottom-up measurements would, within a reasonable boundary of uncertainty, match. The difficulty is that they do not.

What consistent studies carried out over the last decade or so have found is that real-world, ‘top-down’ monitoring exceed the estimated ‘bottom-up’ measurement of emissions by at least two to four times.

It’s this mismatch over measuring that is at the heart of the fracking and climate debate.

Howarth and the significance of methane

The research paper which highlighted the significance of this debate over measurement methods was produced by Howarth, Santoro and Ingraffea in June 2011, entitled ‘Methane and the greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations‘.

The ‘Howarth paper’ gained prominence because it claimed to show that shale gas was not only worse than conventional gas. Under certain circumstances it could be even worse than coal-fired power generation.

The reason why the paper claimed such high climate impacts was due to two main factors:

• Firstly, because it was using ‘top-down’ assessments of leakage from natural gas systems. As noted above, these have consistently produced much higher levels of leakage than ‘bottom-up’ data.
• Secondly, it used a global warming potential (GWP) figure for methane reflecting its impact for the first 20 years after emission, rather than the 100-year figure used by Mackay-Stone. Because methane is a very powerful but relatively short-lived greenhouse gas, this gives a much higher figure, and one more relevant to the immediate climate crisis.

The 20-year issue is important as methane has gained prominence as a greenhouse gas. Again, new sampling techniques have been finding far higher concentrations in the environment than were expected.

As we approach climatic tipping points, the impact of fast-warming methane is becoming more significant to how we respond to climate change.

The Mackay-Stone review

In Britain, DECC commissioned Mackay and Stone to evaluate the climate impacts of shale gas – although if you read the report, it is clear that it is targeted squarely at invalidating the results of the Howarth study.

Very roughly, Mackay and Stone:

• Took a figure for how much gas leaks from a gas well and then calculated the climate impact of those leaks;
• They added the impacts of the gas being burnt;
• Then they divided the total figure for impacts by the amount of gas produced from each well to produce a figure for impacts per unit of energy produced;
• Then they compared that to other available figures for conventional gas, coal-fired power and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).

That is a fair assessment procedure in order to test the impacts of shale gas against other sources of natural gas for power generation. But the problem with Mackay and Stone’s report is not the process, it is the data which they used in their calculations:

• Their figures for gas leakage were predominantly from ‘bottom-up’ studies – which on the basis of a range of research studies have traditionally underestimated emissions by two to four times;
• They deliberately excluded the figures in the Howarth study from their final calculations because they claimed they were a statistical ‘outlier’ which would skew their results; and
• The figures used for gas production per well were at least twice what is seen in US gas wells – and had no clear independent source. However they probably came from Cuadrilla, which had questionable links to DECC at that time.

Using a figure for leakage which was perhaps a half of what it should have been, and a figure for gas production which was twice what it should have been, the level of impacts which their analysis found is arguably a quarter of what it should be.

Mackay and Stone, while rejecting Howarth’s figures, also disregarded other studies produced around that time which had produced similar results to Howarth. Instead they promoted an as yet unpublished study, by Allen et al., which claimed that leakage rates could be minimized using what was called ‘reduced emissions completions’ (REC).

The Allen study

The 2013 study by Allen et al. was part-funded by the campaign group, the Environmental Defense Fund. It is a ‘bottom-up’ analysis of leakage from oil and gas operations, and claimed levels of leakage far lower than similar studies.

However, the study ran into problems from the start:

• The publishing journal, PNAS, had to issue a correction because the authors had failed to declare their conflicting industry affiliations.
• More significantly, the study does not disclose which, and what type of sites were being tested, so it was difficult to relate the results to the industry as a whole.
• Most seriously though, the sites were not randomly selected for testing – as acknowledged in the supporting information published alongside the paper. Their industry partners selected which sites they were to test, and so there’s no evidence the sample of sites measured were representative of the industry as a whole.

The real problems for the Allen study emerged in 2015:

• First, research by Howard et al. highlighted that one of the most widely used sensors to measure methane concentrations – which had been used in the Allen study – routinely malfunctioned, under-reporting methane concentrations.
• Next, the US Argonne National Laboratory, which co-ordinates the reporting of US carbon emissions, noted that the sensor might be under-reporting methane levels by three to five times.
• Finally, in 2016, the Environmental Defense Fund, who had part-funded the Allen study, rejected its results.

Misleading Parliament and the public

From the date of its publication the Mackay-Stone report has been flawed, due to the approach taken to calculate the impacts of shale gas, and in particular due to the selection of data.

DECC and its authors defended this by referencing the Allen study as proof that emissions could be reduced to levels where the impacts would be ‘small’. Now that the Allen study has been shown to be flawed, the Mackay-Stone report has been definitively invalidated too.

However, that has not stopped ministers and Parliamentarians quoting it to support the Government’s policies on oil and gas extraction.

DECC itself was disbanded in 2016, but in January 2017 the new department – the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) – issued revised guidance on shale gas. Once again it echoed the results of the Mackay-Stone report.

Distorting the evidence

In March 2016, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) produced a report on onshore oil and gas production. BEIS did not release it for four months, until Parliament had almost finished for the Summer Recess.

When Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom announced the report to Parliament she claimed that the CCC said that onshore oil and gas was compatible with the UK’s climate targets. This was misleading, as this is not within the context of the CCC’s conclusions.

As stated in the recent House of Commons Library briefing on Shale Gas and Fracking, the CCC concluded that fracking must pass three tests to be acceptable. The third of those requires that we reduce emissions elsewhere in the economy to accommodate the emissions from onshore oil and gas.

That could be extremely difficult – and might not be possible. As Climate Change Secretary Nick Hurd stated in evidence to a Select Committee in January 2017, finding even the 50% of savings that have yet to be identified to meet the UK’s climate targets will be “hard”.

Whitehall‘s fracking policies are completely flawed

The Mackay-Stone report was flawed on the day of its publication. Today it is wholly discredited. No minister can quote its conclusions with any certainty without demonstrably misleading MPs and the public as to the current state of the science.

In fact, like the Mackay-Stone report, large parts of the two other reports which the Government rely upon to justify fracking – the Royal Society report from 2012, and the Public Health England report from 2014 – can be similarly invalidated if we look at the weight of evidence now available.

The Mackay-Stone report must be withdrawn, and a moratorium implemented on all fracking operations until we can state their impacts with certainty.

At the same time Whitehall and government ministers must admit to the mistakes in their previous claims, and commit to an open and transparent review of the evidence now available.

A fully referenced version of this article is available on FRAW.

Proposed Pipeline Accepted by FERC for Pre-Application Review

From WV Public Broadcasting, Associated Press, September 23, 2015

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will review a proposed $2 billion natural gas pipeline in West Virignia before the developer formally submits an application.

The commission notified Columbia Gas Transmission, LLC last week that it accepted the Mountaineer Xpress Project for the pre-filing review process.

Parent companies Columbia Pipeline Group, Inc. and Columbia Pipeline Partners LP said Wednesday that an application will be filed with the federal commission in April 2016. If the pipeline is approved, construction would begin in the fall of 2017.

The pipeline would run about 165 miles from Marshall County to Wayne County. The companies say in a news release that the pipeline would give producers in the Marcellus and Utica shale areas new options to transport gas into the interstate market.

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The PennEast Pipeline Project

Wyomissing, PA, – PennEast Pipeline Company LLC, (PennEast) announced today it is submitting its application September 24, 2015, to FERC for a permit to proceed with construction of the proposed PennEast Pipeline, signaling the next critical step in offering eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey energy consumers the environmental and economic benefits of abundant, locally produced natural gas.

The proposed PennEast Pipeline will bring natural gas to customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. At a cost of approximately $1 billion, this new 114-mile, 36-inch diameter pipeline will deliver approximately 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.

The pipeline will originate in Dallas, Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, and terminate at the Transco pipeline interconnection near Pennington, Mercer County, New Jersey.

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Groups Work to Bring the Public Voice into Gas Pipeline Projects

From an Article by Michael M. Barrick, Appalachian Chronicle, September 21, 2015

Coalition seek answers from WV Department of Environmental Protection

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Members of a coalition of groups including West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition commissioned the consulting firm Downstream Strategies to investigate public input opportunities related to the onslaught of proposed natural gas pipeline construction projects across the state. Special focus is given to one of the proposed large-scale interstate transmission lines, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline – a 42” diameter pipe set to cross a total of 100 water bodies within West Virginia.

“The pace of new pipeline development in West Virginia is overwhelming,” said Cindy Rank, of West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. “Residents are concerned about the damage they’re already seeing to their land and local streams, so we’re working to be able to better educate ourselves and others about the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s (WVDEP) role in the permitting process.”

The groups’ initial research resulted in a report released recently, “Atlantic Coast Pipeline in West Virginia: Opportunities for Public Engagement regarding Erosion and Sedimentation,” and is available at: www.wvrivers.org/archive/pipelinereportdownstreamstrategies.pdf

Erosion and sedimentation causes nearby waterways to be unnaturally muddy to the point of impacting stream life. “The rush to build pipelines raises serious concerns for water quality,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “We’re seeing that efforts to control run-off and slides from these projects aren’t working and our streams are paying the price.”

The report lays out points for public participation in decision-making around the Atlantic Coast Pipeline; however it presents as many unanswered questions as answers. The coalition of groups is committed to seeking clarification from the WVDEP on the state’s storm water permitting process for natural gas pipeline construction.

“Although pipeline companies promise to comply with regulations and avoid impacts to landowners, the reality on the ground is quite different,” said Rick Webb, Coordinator of the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition. “The companies show very little respect for either people or the environment. The fines they sometimes pay are simply the cost of doing business. It seems that non-compliance is cost effective.”

An example of fines for non-compliance came last week when WVDEP agreed to a settlement in which MarkWest Liberty Midstream & Resources will pay $76,000 in fines for a long list of water pollution violations related to at least five of its pipeline projects.

Groups involved in these efforts include Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, Greenbrier River Watershed Association, WV Highlands Conservancy, WV Rivers Coalition and others.