Enormous Methane Leak From Ohio Gas Well Was One of Worst In American History, Satellites Reveal (newsweek.com) 72
A new study has determined that a gas well blowout in Belmont County, Ohio last year was one of the most significant ever to occur in the country. Newsweek reports: In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists estimated that the gas well -- owned by ExxonMobil -- leaked around 120 metric tons of methane per hour over a period of 20 days before the company managed to fix the problem. This amounted to a total of more than 50,000 tons of methane. The authors -- led by Sudhanshu Pandey from SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research -- said that the hourly emission rate from the leak was about twice that of the widely reported event at an oil and gas storage facility in Alison Canyon, California, which took place in 2015 -- the largest known methane leak in the country.
While the emission rate of the Ohio event was higher, the California event lasted longer and produced more emissions overall, The New York Times reported. Nevertheless, the leak at the Belmont County well still released vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere, according to the researchers. In fact, it emitted more of the gas in 20 days than the oil and gas industries of some European nations do in a year. The scientists detected the leak using an instrument known as TROPOMI on the recently launched European Space Agency satellite Copernicus Sentinel-5P, which is designed to continuously monitor methane and other pollutants. [...] The Ohio incident did not garner much attention at the time, although 100 residents within a 100-mile radius had to be evacuated from their homes while workers attempted to fix the leak. Some of these residents had complained of health issues such as throat irritation, dizziness and breathing problems.
While the emission rate of the Ohio event was higher, the California event lasted longer and produced more emissions overall, The New York Times reported. Nevertheless, the leak at the Belmont County well still released vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere, according to the researchers. In fact, it emitted more of the gas in 20 days than the oil and gas industries of some European nations do in a year. The scientists detected the leak using an instrument known as TROPOMI on the recently launched European Space Agency satellite Copernicus Sentinel-5P, which is designed to continuously monitor methane and other pollutants. [...] The Ohio incident did not garner much attention at the time, although 100 residents within a 100-mile radius had to be evacuated from their homes while workers attempted to fix the leak. Some of these residents had complained of health issues such as throat irritation, dizziness and breathing problems.
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Ohio is a Republican run state, this occurred because of a lack of oversight. If an enemy state gassed Ohio with poison gas you would not be calling our response a "nanny state." But when our corporations do it, you just bend over and say "harder daddy."
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Methane is not toxic. The people complaining about dizziness and throat irritations are imagining things. These are the same people that get headaches from WiFi.
To put this leak in perspective, the atmosphere contains about 7 billion tonnes of methane. Preindustrial levels were about half that.
So this 50,000 tonne release added about 0.001%.
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Would you want this released into your gran's nursing home?
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Would you want this released into your gran's nursing home?
Even nitrogen is dangerous in a confined space [wikipedia.org]. But this methane release was not in confined space. Methane has half the density of air and rapidly rises and disperses.
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So you wouldn't want it released into your gran's nursing home. But anyplace else is peachy keen? Are you honestly trying to say this methane release is not a big deal? I don't really understand what point you are trying to make here.
Is this just a knee jerk, tribal reaction to something you consider "the other side's" talking points? It's just so weird to me, to treat climate change like a partisan issue. Help me understand your point of view.
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Dizziness is a symptom of asphyixiation. Methane displaces oxygen.
https://www.pge.com/includes/d... [pge.com]
Pressurized methane will rapidly decrease in temperature when it leaks and decompresses. It will be colder than air and will sink to the very bottom of the atmosphere.
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It will be colder than air and will sink to the very bottom of the atmosphere.
Nonsense. Methane would have to be cooled to below -150C to be heavier than air. Even if the decompression was fully adiabatic and with no mixing, the gas would be nowhere near that cold.
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Natural gas raw from the well often contains hydrogen sulfide and other nasties that are most certainly toxic.
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I wish I could upvote this
Two Farmers (Score:2, Informative)
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Or cows! It's DEFINITELY the cows!
Seriously, looking at the massive amounts of pollution created in accidents like this I just can't feel guilty about 'ruining the environment' when I eat a burger.
Re:But China (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, cattle produced 4 billion tons of CH4 in 2010 [fao.org], or about 80,000 times as much methane as this accident. This is a drop in the ocean.
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'eating his hamburgers, the local (loco?)'
Don't travel much do ya, everyone knows the 'Loco' in Ca is the 'El Pollo'.
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I'm in Europe, but nice try.
Re:But China (Score:5, Informative)
... about 80,000 times as much methane as this accident. This is a drop in the ocean.
None of which came from fossil sources, but from feed crops that suck up the carbon from the environment one year and give it up as cow farts the next. Gas well leaks are fossil sources, and have to be factored into the environmental impact of natural gas.
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This is true, however, the problem is that methane is about 30 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 [sciencedaily.com], rendering the source of said CO2 irrelevant.
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Methane is very quickly converted into CO2 and H2O ... so if it is from natural sources, it is pretty pointless.
And the number, what was it? 80 BILLION TONS? Or was it 80 billion kg, to make it look like a lot? Does not make any sense. We have about 8 billion people on the planet. Most certainly not enough cows to create either of the numbers above.
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methane [Re:But China] (Score:5, Informative)
This is true, however, the problem is that methane is about 30 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 [sciencedaily.com]...
Methane is very quickly converted into CO2 and H2O ...
Residence time of methane in the atmosphere is about 8 years, which is "quick" on a climate scale, but significant on a human scale. So, the bottom line is that methane contributes a lot more to warming than CO2, but is not a long-term effect.
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Methane is very quickly converted into CO2 and H2O ...
"Very quickly"... as in: 9 years lifetime. Over a 20-year period, methane has 100x the greenhouse impact compared to the same mass of CO2.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, but unless we dramatically increase the amount of cows, it is a zero sum game.
It is the same amount of methane as it was 20 years ago, and will most likely be the same in 20 years
It does not matter at all!!
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80,000 times as much methane as this accident
Given how many cattle we eat and how much milk we drink, just think of all the people who could eat without leaving an environmental footprint if we didn't have this accident.
Your post is not only whataboutism it also conflates a human necessity with something completely unnecessary.
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It didn't take long to find - he only flushed 9 times.
This doesn't tell us much (Score:3)
Well some of the smaller states are the Vatican city (population ~1,000), Monaco (population ~39,000), and San Marino (population ~33,000). Some of these will have extremely low emissions, the Vatican city gets all it's electricity supplied by Italy and San Marino has a geothermal plant which is integrated into the Italian grid, and Monaco gets all its electricity from France. It wouldn't have to be that big to emit more than these use in a year.
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Assuming the detected emission represents the average rate for the 20-d blowout period, we find the total methane emission from the well blowout is comparable to one-quarter of the entire state of Ohio’s reported annual oil and natural gas methane emission, or, alternatively, a substantial fraction of the annual anthropogenic methane emissions from several European countries.
Re:This doesn't tell us much (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah it is so much more useful when they report things in "libraries of congress" units...
Why didn't either of you read the summary at least (Score:2)
leaked around 120 metric tons of methane per hour over a period of 20 days before the company managed to fix the problem. This amounted to a total of more than 50,000 tons of methane.
Why are you complaining about the second part of the summary if you didn't bother to read the first bit?
You probably didn't bother to read either, but still though it would be a good idea to reply to someone equally as clueless as you.
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I read it fine. I have no way to tell what 50.000 tons of methane means in the grand scheme of things. I'd want it as a percentage of something defined, like percentage of global emissions, or even compared to a country, just a specific one. I still have no idea how bad it was overall.
Some units are perfectly fine for some uses, useless in others - i.e. you don't ask for 1 billion grains of sand, you ask for 30kg of sand.
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Okay, the total emissions from this accident were about 50,000 tons.
The atmosphere masses about 5,000,000,000,000,000 tons. That mass varies, depending on the amount of water vapor in the air, by about 1,000,000,000,000 tons.
So, call it 0.000005% of the water vapor, or 0.000000001% of the atmosphere as a whole...
In other words, the only real problem with this leak is that the owner is out a ton of money. Effect on AGW? Inconsequential....
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Fossil fuels are killing us (Score:2)
Methane isn't quite as bad as made out (Score:3)
Yes its a potent greenhouse gas but unlike CO2 its half life in the atmosphere is only around 7-10 years so that 50K tons of methane will soon become a similar amount of CO2 and considering how much we release of the latter each year its a drop in the ocean.
If any theories about methane clathrate are ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... remotely true, we have a serious problem heading towards the earths ecosystem and humanity. These research results are so scary, I don't even want to think about them too much. They're my new "atom bomb angst", a feeling I haven't felt since the 80ies. And AFAICT this threat is actually at least as eminent.
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It sounds like you're pretty committed to being terrified, but understand that cyclic warming has happened to raise temps above what we're talking about, and temps have always subsequently been driven down by mechanisms which nobody's really bothering to try to understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
specifically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"The 6th Extinction" (Score:2)
I recommend you get that book and read it. Very insightful. And scary. And that's a good thing. Being paranoid about humanitys impact on the global eco-system these days is the correct Modus Operandi. Everyone should join in on that.
My 2 eurocents.
post is a know nothing (Score:2)
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and the amount is essentially zero compared to the 200 million tons fossil fuel use emits and the 450 million bacteria emit. A non-issue for greenhouse gas emission.
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Don't US oil and gas wells have to have SSSVs (sub-surface shutdown valves) installed in them s part ot the completion string? Normally about a thousand feet down in the intermediate casing, requiring that the top part of that string is an inch or two greater in bore than the main part of the string.
Oh, sorry, is there some mo
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But SSSv's are known to fail or it was pulled for maintenance or a large diameter tool intervention. Not a reason for a blow out because there should be another three valves at the wellhead and during such an intervention you would also have at least one BOP (Blow Out Preventer) at surface.
I Haven't found a good technical report on the incident but my first reaction based on the company and the place where it happened would be: "Work carried out by cowboys managed by bean counters and witho
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There's an acronym for that : SNAFU.
IAW (Score:2)
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Nonsense, the amount emitted, 50,000 tons was essentially zero. Mankind emits 450 million tons per year, and microbes 200 million tons. This was NOTHING.
Shame you didn't pay attention in science and math class and learn relative magnitudes.
"Some European nations" is very vague. (Score:2)
It could mean Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, Monaco or Andorra...:)
Worst? (Score:2)
Given it took this new satellite tech to measure this â"- how good is our baseline ?
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I suspect that the existence of the blowout was well known about. I've never been so incompetent as to have one of my wells blowout, but on those rare (about 1 in 15 wells) cases where we've had a kick (a blowout which we kept under control), the noise from the choke manifold was pretty hard to miss.
Measuring the amount of material released, on the other hand, is harder if your flow metering (billing) equipment is scattered around the scenery.
REGULATION is the answer!!! (Score:1)
And, how corporations can regulate themselves?!
PEOPLE: Do the math: regulation, enforced, is FAR cheaper than the inevitable accident!