{"id":35383,"date":"2018-06-22T07:52:49","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35383"},"modified":"2018-06-22T07:52:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-22T12:52:49","slug":"methane-leaks-from-oil-and-gas-60-higher-than-epa-estimates-new-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35383","title":{"rendered":"Methane Leaks from Oil and Gas 60% Higher Than EPA Estimates, New Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Methane Leaks from Oil and Gas 60% Higher Than EPA Estimates, New Study Finds<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

Each year, oil and gas industry\u00a0operations in the U.S.<\/span> are leaking roughly 60 percent more methane, a powerful greenhouse gas,\u00a0into our atmosphere than previous estimates from the\u00a0U.S.<\/span> Environmental Protection Agency, which relied heavily on self-reporting by the\u00a0industry.<\/p>\n

That’s the conclusion of a study<\/a> published today in the peer-reviewed journal Science and conducted with funding from the Department of Energy, NASA<\/span>, and private foundations. The two dozen researchers involved\u00a0found that the U.S.<\/span> oil and gas supply chain releases between 11 and 15 million metric tons of methane per\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study confirms the growing body of peer-reviewed science indicating oil and gas extraction’s methane pollution makes it as harmful to climate as coal burning’s carbon dioxide pollution,\u201d said Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Cornell University professor emeritus of engineering and vice president of Earthwork’s board of\u00a0directors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis confirms there is no ‘bridge fuel’,\u201d Ingraffea said. \u201cTo stave off catastrophic climate change we need to immediately drop all fossil fuels in favor of conservation and\u00a0renewables.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Leaky\u00a0System<\/strong><\/p>\n

Methane\u00a0is a powerful and fast-acting greenhouse gas.\u00a0Each ton of methane causes over 80 times the amount of climate warming as an equal amount of carbon dioxide in the first two decades after it enters the atmosphere. It’s also the primary ingredient in the natural gas that’s used to heat homes and to generate electricity \u2014 and when it leaks from oil and gas wells, pipelines, and other equipment, it can cause the world’s climate to grow hotter\u00a0faster.<\/p>\n

Even when methane is burned, it still has a globe-warming effect because it releases carbon dioxide emissions of its own. A \u201cnew, efficient\u201d natural gas power plant generates about 40 to 50 percent\u00a0as much carbon dioxide as a \u201ctypical new coal plant\u201d when that gas is burned, according to<\/a> the Union of Concerned Scientists \u2014 but the methane leaks in the supply chain come on top of that carbon\u00a0pollution.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Methane Leaks from Oil and Gas 60% Higher Than EPA Estimates, New Study Finds Each year, oil and gas industry\u00a0operations in the U.S. are leaking roughly 60 percent more methane, a powerful greenhouse gas,\u00a0into our atmosphere than previous estimates from the\u00a0U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which relied heavily on self-reporting by the\u00a0industry. That’s the conclusion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5317,1470,386,13615,10116,705,11167,9703],"class_list":["post-35383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-epa","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-methane-leaks","tag-oil-and-gas-production","tag-science","tag-sharon-kelly","tag-us-environmental-protection-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35384,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35383\/revisions\/35384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}