{"id":52778,"date":"2020-04-25T18:32:45","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T23:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52778"},"modified":"2020-04-25T18:32:49","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T23:32:49","slug":"new-satellite-data-reveals-dangerous-methane-emissions-in-permian-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52778","title":{"rendered":"New Satellite Data Reveals Dangerous Methane Emissions in Permian Region"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2020\/04\/25\/new-satellite-data-confirms-scale-methane-leaks-permian-region\">New Satellite Data Reveals Dangerous Methane Emissions in Permian Region<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/022420_permian_375-2.jpg?itok=0UGRvdEA\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>New research based on satellite data confirms that the oil and gas industry in the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico is leaking record amounts of methane. The new research published in the journal&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/advances.sciencemag.org\/content\/6\/17\/eaaz5120\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Science Advances<\/a>&nbsp;found that methane emissions in the Permian Basin were equivalent to 3.7 percent&nbsp;of the total methane&nbsp;produced by the oil and gas industry&nbsp;there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In December&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/12\/22\/methane-leaks-venting-blowouts-fracking-climate-change\">DeSmog reported&nbsp;<\/a>on the work of Robert Howarth,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ecologyandevolution.cornell.edu\/robert-warren-howarth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a biogeochemist at Cornell University<\/a>, who has been studying the methane emissions of the oil and gas industry. Howarth\u2019s latest research estimated that 3.4 percent of all natural gas produced from shale in the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;is leaked throughout the production cycle, which appears to be confirmed by this new&nbsp;research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and makes up approximately 90 percent&nbsp;of what is known as natural gas. It&#8217;s a major contributor to global&nbsp;warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The oil and gas industry has long tried to sell the idea of natural gas, which is, again, primarily methane,&nbsp;as a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/10\/16\/fact-checking-american-petroleum-institute-gas-ads\">clean energy<\/a>climate solution. However, with a leakage rate&nbsp;of 3.7 percent, natural gas is actually worse for the climate than&nbsp;coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Advertisements for natural gas from the industry trade group the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/american-petroleum-institute\">American Petroleum Institute<\/a>&nbsp;have claimed, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U8CnhwP5Zqg&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;t=16s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Thanks to natural gas, the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;is leading the way in reducing emissions<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This new satellite data confirms that simply isn\u2019t the case. When the methane leaks from oil and gas production are taken into account, natural gas is unquestionably a dirty fossil&nbsp;fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This new research also helps explain why methane emissions rose at\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/energy-environment\/491424-2019-atmospheric-methane-increase-greatest-in-five-years\" target=\"_blank\">such a high rate in\u00a02019.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Satellite Data Reveals Dangerous Methane Emissions in Permian Region New research based on satellite data confirms that the oil and gas industry in the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico is leaking record amounts of methane. The new research published in the journal&nbsp;Science Advances&nbsp;found that methane emissions in the Permian Basin were equivalent [&hellip;]<\/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":[5317,331,412,11782,5316,3640],"class_list":["post-52778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fracking","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-methane","tag-permian-basin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52778","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=52778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52779,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52778\/revisions\/52779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}