Hidden Menace: Massive Methane Leaks Speed Up Climate Change (apnews.com) 68
To the naked eye, the Mako Compressor Station outside the dusty West Texas crossroads of Lenorah appears unremarkable, similar to tens of thousands of oil and gas operations scattered throughout the oil-rich Permian Basin. What's not visible through the chain-link fence is the plume of invisible gas, primarily methane, billowing from the gleaming white storage tanks up into the cloudless blue sky. From a report: The Mako station, owned by a subsidiary of West Texas Gas, was observed releasing an estimated 870 kilograms of methane -- an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas -- into the atmosphere each hour. That's the equivalent impact on the climate of burning seven tanker trucks full of gasoline every day.
But Mako's outsized emissions aren't illegal, or even regulated. And it was only one of 533 methane "super emitters" detected during a 2021 aerial survey of the Permian conducted by Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The group documented massive amounts of methane venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations across the Permian, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border that a billion years ago was the bottom of a shallow sea. Hundreds of those sites were seen spewing the gas over and over again. Ongoing leaks, gushers, going unfixed.
But Mako's outsized emissions aren't illegal, or even regulated. And it was only one of 533 methane "super emitters" detected during a 2021 aerial survey of the Permian conducted by Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The group documented massive amounts of methane venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations across the Permian, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border that a billion years ago was the bottom of a shallow sea. Hundreds of those sites were seen spewing the gas over and over again. Ongoing leaks, gushers, going unfixed.
Absurd they wouldn't flare it (Score:5, Interesting)
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If they tried to do it in a civilised place, they would get shut down of fined.
Re: Absurd they wouldn't flare it (Score:1)
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Perhaps they could run electric generators off the methane and put the electricity on the grid. Presumably these sites have electricity from the grid to run the pumps, lights, and so forth. They should be able to feed power back much like a solar PV system would.
But then I remember some old court case against some oil refinery for selling the electricity they produced in excess of their needs. Apparently some power plants complained that the refineries were effectively getting their fuel to make electric
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Ideally you would capture the methane for use but if no pipelines are around it's a difficult prospect to get the gas to market. Failing that, I don't see why they wouldn't flare it. CH4 is about 80x the potency of CO2 over a ten year horizon.
Further, its end-of-life is almost entirely being converted to CO2. Yes, flaring vs. release is a big win in the short term with no greenhouse effect downsides in the long term.
If there's not enough of it with a market nearby to justify a pipeline, but there IS a mark
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad, but as Europe found out you need fossil fuels to live. So I guess we will need to deal with it. We are not going to get rid of fossil fuels.
No, Europe did not find out you need fossil fuels. They found out that dependence on fossil fuels is a recipe for blackmail, war and exploitation.
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There _is_ a way around it. You build wind, solar, and hopefully geothermal decade after decade until they are numerous enough to supply all energy needs.
Could do other nice things like work on getting the production of everything necessary to do it back into the USA, the easiest way to do that is nuking the income tax, which strangles manufacturing in the country. With automation now a big thing and dramatically reducing the cost of labor, and more coming, the long pole in the tent for expense in the m
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There _is_ a way around it. You build wind, solar, and hopefully geothermal decade after decade until they are numerous enough to supply all energy needs.
Could do other nice things like work on getting the production of everything necessary to do it back into the USA, the easiest way to do that is nuking the income tax, which strangles manufacturing in the country.
Ideological blindness beyond measure.
No income tax, no freeways, no airports, no FAA no FCC. NOthing strangled Ameircan manufacturing but corporate Capitalist demands for lower wages. NOTHING else was superior about Vietnamese manufacturing over Dearborn. Nothing.
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Problem with comprehension? I said REPLACE the income tax with a different tax. There's nothing magic about the money from an income tax spending better than money from some other kind of tax. And, OBTW, before 1913 when the income tax was passed, we had roads, libraries, etc from the taxes we had at that time too. The luxury tax, charged on spending above the poverty level (spending above the poverty level is spending on things one doesn't need, which is the definition of a luxury) is called the FairT
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Problem with comprehension? I said REPLACE the income tax with a different tax. There's nothing magic about the money from an income tax spending better than money from some other kind of tax.
Corporate income taxes are largely irrelevant to the cost of manufacturing. Companies can and do shelter income from overseas sales in a foreign subsidiary and almost never repatriate that money. And companies have to pay those taxes on revenue from U.S. sales whether their products are manufactured here or abroad.
Corporate *payroll* taxes could ostensibly have some effect, except that 7.65% isn't enough to matter. On average, U.S. manufacturing employees make $64,861 per year [datausa.io] After payroll taxes, that'
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I heard you. Replace progressive taxation with regressive taxation. Somehow taxing the MOST rewarded is killing manufacturing. Yet somehow, it had no effect AT ALL when shipping jobs overseas. PROGRESSIVE taxation still applied to all those profits so, as I said, propaganda.
Yeah, pretty much. Taxation (increases or decreases) cannot meaningly have any effect on corporations shipping jobs overseas unless the tax applies to imports and foreign employees. Anybody who says otherwise is probably trying to get public support for some massive tax break to "encourage" a company to build manufacturing somewhere. Historically, those efforts almost invariably fail [governing.com], yet politicians keep thinking this time will be different. :-/
The thing is, we don't tax the most rewarded. Instead, we
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Explain how a luxury tax is regressive.
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Well you need to be dependent on fossil fuels. There is no way around it. Fossil fuels are necessary to live (as I said). ...
WRONG. You are only dependent on fossil fuels if you have a complete lack of capital or a lack of capital thinking.
NO ONE needs fossil fuels as the only choice.
While there may be less CONVENIENCE in non-fossil fuels, most of America had neither AC nor 24 hour gas available when waging global war.
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Grow the fuck up. If you get rid of fossil fuels right now, all of them, you will starve as well as everyone else you know. All jobs will cease to be, the economy will collapse. That is not some offbeat thought, that is the truth. There won't be some immediate white knight in an electric powered scooter coming in to fix everything overnight. THAT, means we are dependent on fossil fuels. Yes, we need to become independent of fossil fuels, but we aren't yet. So get a fucking grip and stop spouting sophomoric,
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It needs to be made about the money. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're a business so this needs to be made about the money.
Some math and searching...
At 1 atm methane is about 0.42 pounds per cubic foot, so about 4500 cubic feet per hour, which sells at about $6 per thousand cubic feet, so about $27/hour, or about $20,000 per month or about $230K dollars per year, just under a quarter million dollars.
So assuming they could easily attach it to the gas system, that's a quarter million dollars in gained or lost revenue. If they flare it, they can think of it as a lot of burnt money but at least it isn't destroying the atmosphere in the process.
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Ah yes, if it doesn't make money, it is perfectly fine to just dump your waste into the atmosphere. Or the groundwater, rivers, oceans, streets... Why did they even ban leaded gasoline? Surely there's no money in that.
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Its about money 'cuz every time someone comes along with another expensive mitigation, someone else has to pay it. And environmental approaches to date have always been, "money is no object" which inconveniences the hell out of most of us, but those making less $$$ than us choose to eat today rather than spend that same money on medicine that will keep them alive tomorrow. Or heating / cooling that will kill in its absence. Etc.
We can tsk tsk the situation all we want, but in the end someone has to pa
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Why does someone else have to pay for it? And not the originator?
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Because when the originator is forced to pay for it, they are a company that simply raises their prices to get the money to pay for it, and the ones paying the increased price is _US_. WE pay the expenses of all the corporations, they have no money tree. You want 'em to take it out of profits? Then they simply close their doors, all the worker's jobs are lost, and the enterprise is replaced by something from overseas, that probably has FAR less environmental concern than our own companies. The planet ge
Re: It needs to be made about the money. (Score:2)
Lead wasn't put in gasoline to dispose of it.
Re:It needs to be made about the money. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It needs to be made about the money. (Score:4, Funny)
I say have the executives go light the leaks with matches.
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Business are not super geniuses with a 100% profit rate.
Fuck ups, general mismanagement and bad ideas can happen even on the biggest corporations.
Ask commodore
critical thought, please. (Score:1)
The author expects us to believe that the methane equivalent of 7 tanker trucks of gasoline - or the equivalent of 77,000 gallons x $5/gallon = $385k per day is wasted by this business. That's 140 million dollars per year, and nobody at the business thought, "Maybe we should cap it and sell it?".
I want to know how many businesses can afford to waste nearly a seventh of a billion dollars per year and remain solvent? And it what corporation/industry is that scale of waste even acceptable?
Or maybe, some
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Or, you know, they could at least burn it to make it less bad. Combusting it into CO2 would be better and not particularly expensive. If landfills in my area are required to flare their methane, one would think these folks would be required to as well.
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Or, you know, they could at least burn it to make it less bad. Combusting it into CO2 would be better and not particularly expensive.
Even that is arguable, methane is lighter than air so it's effects on surface temperature isn't as certain as the "Experts" would lead you to be.
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It's not the dollar equivalent of gasoline, but the carbon equivalent. As noted above somewhere, it's about a quarter million worth in gas. And that's retail, delivered through a pipeline. Which they don't have handy. So its "worth" is probably much less than what it would cost to fix all the leaks.
The only way to solve this is add fines to the equation, which would encourage repairs. Or tax breaks. Carrot and stick.
Probably a drop in the bucket (Score:5, Informative)
You should check out the PBS episode, Arctic Sinkholes [pbs.org] from Feb 2022 about huge methane emissions from melting permafrost:
Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Related articles:
Nova episode explores Arctic methane explosions [uaf.edu]
The Arctic Lakes Where Methane Makes Water Roar in a Violent Rolling Boil [newsweek.com]
Arctic methane emissions [wikipedia.org]
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I wonder if whoever mod'ed that "Troll" actually read the post? 'Cause there's no trolling; the Arctic sinkhole methane emissions are huge.
[ I know, "Welcome to /." ... :-) ]
How Dare You! (Score:1)
This happened (Score:2)
Porter Ranch [wikipedia.org]
The leak initially released about 44,000 kilograms (kg) of methane per hour or 1,200 tons of methane every day, which in terms of greenhouse gas output per month compares with the equivalent effluvia from 200,000 cars in a year
and no one cared including the the folks who claimed they care about climate change. I followed that story closely and in the end it confirmed that politics, nepotism, and relationships trump other things.
Re: This happened (Score:2)
I was at Porter Ranch, on site in Aliso Canyon, measuring that methane emission rate. My colleagues and I lamented that if this had happened in the middle of nowhere (like central Texas), where there wasn't a rich neighborhood nearby complaining of the smell, it would have gone on for much longer, and been dealt with quietly (if it was even reported at all).
Good. (Score:3)
We deserve it all. We're incapable of sustaining this planet. May it live after we're gone.
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Yep, it's all over (Score:2)
except for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Beat them on price. (Score:1)
If people want to see less drilling for petroleum and natural gas then beat them on price. If you can't beat them on price then provide some benefits to make up for the difference.
There's no carbon tax solution to this in a nation where people can vote. If they find the carbon tax inconvenient for them then they vote the taxes away. Caring about the environment is a luxury, ranking in below food, fuel, shelter, medicine, education, and likely more. Seeing the next movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
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The price should include pricing in the externalities of drilling so it's actually a fair market. I presume you would support that, yes?
No. That is a silly idea and you should feel ashamed for suggesting it. There's no objective means to calculate these costs, and someone could argue that the external costs are negative. By negative external costs I mean that there is a net gain in burning fossil fuels. What then? Do we pay people for burning fossil fuels? You disagree on there being a net benefit on the externalities? Okay then, how can we prove anyone is correct?
Then comes the problem of enforcement. The usual enforcement given is
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The price should include pricing in the externalities of drilling so it's actually a fair market. I presume you would support that, yes?
No. That is a silly idea and you should feel ashamed for suggesting it. There's no objective means to calculate these costs, and someone could argue that the external costs are negative.
We can fairly objectively compute the difference in mean temperature since some reference date, compute the average cost of air conditioning to make up for it, multiply times the number of people in the world who have air conditioners, and have a concrete cost that was measured objectively. It won't be anywhere near the entire cost of the externalities of fossil fuel production and use, but it will at least be *a* cost. There are probably lots of other costs that can also be readily computed.
We call them "externalities" because they are outside of the normal costs and benefits as we can calculate them. Being a cost we can't easily compute is what defines "externalities".
An externalit
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Nope. It is not possible to calculate this external cost with any precision that will satisfy the people that will have to vote for them. There's going to be someone that will show their calculations where they should be paid to burn fossil fuels because of the net benefits. How does that work? Because the alternative to burning fossil fuels cost more. So if we are to keep food, clothing, and shelter affordable then we should give incentives to people for choosing the lower cost energy source.
But then
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It's only Democrats that don't want nuclear power.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/3... [gallup.com]
Democrats control the US federal government now. They aren't going to control the government forever. Also, the Democrat party platform was changed to include support for nuclear power so their opposition to nuclear power will be short lived as well. They just need to be real quiet on nuclear power until the election so they don't scare off the anti-nuclear voters.
https://democrats.org/where-we... [democrats.org]
What is "forcing" nuclear
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Here's a better idea, beat fossil fuels on price, and profits, so people have a real incentive to stop burning fossil fuels.
And if we can't? Just let the world burn and everybody die for your free market ideology?
Artificial price fixes will skew the markets which could have unintended consequences.
And plenty of intended consequences.
Taxing coal to subsidize solar power could mean profitable coal being driven from the market
That's the point...
with the government propping up unprofitable solar power by subsidies.
Yes, also the point.
This again would lead to the government handing out money until there's no money left.
So don't do that then. Set an amount you're willing to set aside.
Crisis averted, we didn't spend the entire US budget on solar subsidies. That was close.
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If we don't have a profitable replacement for fossil fuels then energy becomes a money pit. If the government drives out profitable energy sources by subsidizing unprofitable energy sources then once all the profitable energy sources are gone it is only a matter of time before the economy grinds to a stop. If the government puts a cap on the subsidies to prevent bankrupting everyone then it will be impossible to drive out profitable energy with unprofitable energy.
Profit should be a simple concept, it is
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If the government drives out profitable energy sources by subsidizing unprofitable energy sources then once all the profitable energy sources are gone
Did you mean to cover your slippery slope with so much oil?
Simple solution is again, don't do that.
If the government puts a cap on the subsidies to prevent bankrupting everyone then it will be impossible to drive out profitable energy with unprofitable energy.
So we reduced the pollution and didn't bankrupt everyone. Huzzah!
What happens if there's no profit in alternatives to fossil fuels?
There already is, so it's a bit silly of you to make such a claim... You must mean "not enough profit".
You literally want to destroy the world because we aren't making "enough profit" with the cleaner alternatives.
What happens if there is almost as much profit? And a tiny subsidy or helping hand to get started tips the balance?
We know nuclear power ...
There it is.
Su
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You just prefer we subsidize nuclear instead.
Are you being paid to not understand? That's about the only thing I can think of to explain you being so dense. I just walked you through how energy subsidies would bankrupt us, why would I support any energy subsidies?
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If people want to see less drilling for petroleum and natural gas then beat them on price. If you can't beat them on price then provide some benefits to make up for the difference.
The benefit is not destroying the planet we are all trying to live on.
Stop Selling the Desert (Score:1)
870 kilograms of methane (Score:2)
How many cow farts is that?
Superemitters (Score:3)
I work in this field, measuring methane emissions all across the country. The hardest part of stopping these emissions is finding them. A typical well pad or compressor station has hundreds of accidental leaks (loose fittings, broken pipes, valves left open) and engineered leaks (leaks where the emissions are intentional, for operation). The vast majority of those sites have relatively small total emission rates. But for every 20 sites where the methane emissions are X kg/hr, there is one site that is emitting 100X kg/hr. A relatively small number of facilities are responsible for a disproportionately large fraction of methane emitted. This is another way of saying the distribution of facility emissions has a "fat tail". So if you're trying to reduce overall GHG emissions from the natural gas facilities, you want to go after those superemitters first. Of course you want to fix all leaks, but with limited resources you get the most bang for the buck by fixing superemitters.
The difficulty is in efficiently finding those sites. It's not trivial because there are a lot of sites, they're very spread out, frequently in remote areas, and their emissions aren't constant (a superemitter may not alway superemit). If you ask an oil and gas industry person why they don't just find and fix them, they'll claim they have thousands of sites under their purview and don't have the resources or personnel to measure emissions at every site, only to find the 5% that are major sources. If they did have those resources the price of natural gas would be higher (they claim), which is a political nightmare. Just take a look at what the recent rise in gasoline price has meant politically. So a major push in the research community (including the good folks at JPL) has been to develop fast methods to survey large areas in order to efficiently find those superemitters. Effectively reduce the cost of finding superemitters to the point where the industry takes notice.
In my opinion the ideal scenario is that this sort of technology is used by DEP/EPA (or in TX, TCEQ) to find superemitters, then fine the operator and force them to correct the leak. Make those fines large enough that it is worth the industry investing in the survey technology themselves, so they get out ahead of the regulatory agencies that would fine them. Then use the fine money to invest in renewable technologies and tax incentives for their use, hastening the decline of our fossil fuel dependence.