Methane in the Membrane
The oil and gas industry’s invisible threat
What we can’t see is hurting us.
The oil and gas boom is playing out in dozens of states across the country. Yet years later we are still struggling to fully understand the devastating impacts it’s having on our environment and public health. The industry’s impacts are local, often severe and likely to unfold over decades. First, we see changes in our groundwater. Next, local surface water is degraded. Then we realize the entire lifecycle of water used in oil and gas operations is vulnerable to contamination. Worse yet it’s the smog-forming pollutants and other air toxics released into the air that threatens our health, especially for children. Finally, some are forced to accept that oil and gas development is an “assault” on their way of life. Now it’s methane pollution that promises to kick climate change into overdrive.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, trapping over 80 times more heat in the atmosphere in the short term than its more widely known partner — carbon dioxide. The largest industrial source of methane emissions is from the oil and gas industry.
The problems start almost immediately when methane is either accidentally leaked or intentionally vented from various stages of oil and gas development. First, methane seeps out at the surface of oil and gas wells, this continues along miles of pipelines and it drifts off of compressor stations and other natural gas infrastructure. Together these thousands of leaks across the country equal the climate pollution of 160 coal-fired power plants.
It is critical to understand that the entire lifecycle of natural gas production is prone to methane leaks. These leaks are the reason that gas is not a clean fuel and our increased reliance on gas over coal to generate electricity for a climate benefit is essentially a gamble.
Methane is invisible, but new leak detection and infrared video technology make this climate disaster visible.
See aerial footage of methane leaking out of a natural gas storage facility in Los Angeles, California. The gas stored there is extracted in Colorado or Texas, piped into southern California and then injected underground for long-term storage. The gas is then piped out of the ground and delivered to residents during peak energy demand times.
If you’re thinking, “wow, I can’t believe that is how we keep the lights on in 2016” you would not be alone. There are better ways to do things but that’s for another blog.
The good news is EPA recognized that continuous methane pollution spewing into the atmosphere threatens to destabilize our climate and there are things we can do about it. There are low-cost technologies that companies are already utilizing to capture methane and sell it back into the market.
In late 2015, EPA proposed the Methane Pollution Standard which would help curb methane pollution from the industry. The problem is that the standard only applies to new oil and gas wells and does not extend to the thousands of existing oil and gas sites and infrastructure. Existing facilities account for the vast majority of methane pollution happening right now.
Clean Water Action and our allies are pressing EPA to extend the Methane Pollution Standard to existing oil and gas facilities in the last year of the Obama Administration.
We know it can be done because both Pennsylvania and California proposed new methane pollution standards which will cover all oil and gas facilities, new and existing. It’s time for EPA to respond to the call and do the same at the federal level.
The science is in. It’s time to plug the leaks. Add your voice now and let EPA know you support expanded methane pollution protections!
