Key points:
- Across the U.S., oil and gas operations emit more than 6 million tons of methane per year.
- Using aerial measurements and an emissions simulation tool, researchers found that methane emissions were almost three times higher than estimated levels.
- Emissions cost industry $10 billion per year as a result of lost commercial value, economic harm, and damage to human well-being.
Oil and gas operations emit methane through intentional vents and unintentional leaks at levels that can harm both the environment and the economy. A study, published in Nature, reveals that these operations are emitting more than 6 million tons of methane per year across the United States.
Researchers determined that emissions result in $1 billion in lost commercial value for energy producers. When they accounted for harm to the economy and human well-being, the annual cost rose to $10 billion. Both of these estimates are approximately three times the level predicted by the U.S. government.
To perform the emission calculations, the team utilized nearly 1 million aerial measurements of wells, pipelines, storage, and transmission facilities in productive regions including the Permian and Fort Worth basin in Texas and New Mexico, California’s San Joaquin basin, Colorado’s Denver-Julesburg basin, Pennsylvania’s section of the Appalachian basin, and Utah’s Uinta basin. They combined these direct aerial measurements with an emissions simulation tool that could estimate emissions that would be too small for aircraft detection.
The researchers found that emissions in three of six regions were higher than the expected values. The highest emitter was the New Mexico portion of the Permian Basin with nearly 10% of total methane volume produced in 2019 going straight to the atmosphere.
Because methane can trap so much heat in the short term, accurate assessments of methane are critical for predicting the impacts of climate change and verifying emission reductions. The team hopes that showing that leaks cost industry more than a billion dollars a year will gain producers’ attention and motivate them to voluntarily stop emissions at their facilities. They also hope that their calculations and their method can spur climate change mitigation efforts.
“Climate change mitigation starts with better tracking of emissions, but also accurate tracking of reduction efforts going forward,” explained senior author Adam Brandt, professor at Stanford University. “The method introduced here offers a path to combining measurements at several scales to greatly improve inventories that should lead us to much better tracking of those important reductions critical to national mitigation commitments.”