{"id":55205,"date":"2020-10-03T07:38:59","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T12:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55205"},"modified":"2020-10-03T07:38:59","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T12:38:59","slug":"the-us-oil-and-gas-industrys-methane-problem-is-catching-up-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=55205","title":{"rendered":"The US Oil and Gas Industry’s Methane Problem Is Catching up With It"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Oil and Gas Industry’s Methane Problem Is Catching up With It<\/a><\/h3>\n
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For years, the oil and gas industry has been able to downplay, or outright ignore, the problem of methane. Methane is an invisible gas, and lax state and federal regulations in the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>\u00a0have allowed oil and gas producers to self-report\u00a0how much of this\u00a0potent planet-warming gas leaks\u00a0from its\u00a0supply chain, which researchers have\u00a0repeatedly found<\/a>\u00a0is a lot more than the industry was admitting\u00a0to.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But\u00a0improved technologies,\u00a0particularly from\u00a0satellites<\/a>, have allowed the world to increasingly fact-check industry numbers, shining a light on the true climate impact of natural gas, which is primarily methane. These days, methane emissions have become an industry black eye, to the point that major players are now clamoring for regulations after the Trump administration recently finalized the rollback of Obama-era rules meant to reduce methane leaks from oil and\u00a0gas.<\/p>\n

On August 24, the Houston Chronicle\u00a0published an op-ed\u00a0<\/a>arguing for the United States to regulate\u00a0methane emissions for the oil and gas industry,\u00a0and it was co-written by two influential voices in the industry, Antoine Halff and Andrew Gould. Halff was formerly the head of oil analysis at the International Energy Agency, an independent, intergovernmental organization focused on energy research and policy \u2014 and notorious for its\u00a0overly optimistic\u00a0(and inaccurate) outlooks for fossil fuels and overly pessimistic views on renewables.\u00a0Gould is the former\u00a0CEO<\/span>\u00a0of Schlumberger, the world\u2019s largest oilfield services company.\u00a0Gould also currently serves on\u00a0the board of Occidental Petroleum Corporation<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 one of the largest fracking companies among\u00a0the Permian oilfields\u00a0of\u00a0Texas.<\/p>\n

Halff and Gould were writing\u00a0in response to the Trump administration’s\u00a0repeal of existing methane\u00a0regulations<\/a>.\u00a0However, as a sign of the changing times, they argued that regulating the greenhouse gas is\u00a0simply good business for the oil and gas\u00a0industry.<\/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":"

The US Oil and Gas Industry’s Methane Problem Is Catching up With It For years, the oil and gas industry has been able to downplay, or outright ignore, the problem of methane. Methane is an invisible gas, and lax state and federal regulations in the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0have allowed oil and gas producers to self-report\u00a0how much of this\u00a0potent […]<\/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":[3,4],"tags":[141,5317,331,386,412,11782,5316,7437,1729],"class_list":["post-55205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fracking","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-hydraulic-fracturing","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-methane","tag-methane-emissions","tag-oil-and-gas-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55205","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=55205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55206,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55205\/revisions\/55206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}