Methane Clips: October 15, 2021

Methane General News

Abandoned Wells Are A Huge Climate Problem. According to The Washington Post, “The number of abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States is much higher than previously thought, according to an exclusive analysis shared with The Climate 202. The analysis, which was done by the Environmental Defense Fund and McGill University, found that there are 81,283 documented orphan wells across the country that were drilled and then improperly abandoned by oil and gas companies. That’s nearly 1.5 times the previous estimate of roughly 56,000 wells from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a quasi-governmental organization. Each orphan well is a major climate problem: It spews methane, a potent greenhouse gas. While methane breaks down in the atmosphere faster than carbon dioxide, it’s about 86 times more powerful at warming the planet in the short term. The analysis also found that about 9 million Americans live within one mile of an orphan well, including 4.3 million people of color and 550,000 children younger than 5 who are especially vulnerable to health problems tied to air pollution. The findings come with a map showing the locations of orphan wells in all 50 states, including ‘hot spots’ in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. ‘I think what you get out of this map is a sense of how big this problem is,’ Adam Peltz, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund who worked on the analysis, told The Climate 202. ‘It’s a coast-to-coast problem. It’s a rural and urban problem.’” [Washington Post, 10/15/21]

How Methane Monitoring Can Help Fight The Climate Crisis. According to Forbes, “Increasing global concern over the impact of climate change is forcing governments, the business community and others to explore ways to immediately start addressing global warming. With the release of the 2021 report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one specific area of concern has been methane. Over a 20-year period, it is 80 times more powerful at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, according to the U.N. Environment Programme. One significant, addressable source of methane emissions is hydrocarbon-intensive operations such as oil and natural gas, chemical and power generation facilities, according to the International Energy Agency, which says that ‘reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations is among the most cost-effective and impactful actions that governments can take to achieve global climate goals.’” [Forbes, 10/14/21]

Opinion Pieces

Op-Ed: Kicking The Can On Methane. According to Op-Ed by David Frame And Adrian Macey in Newsroom, “There is a real risk that focusing on methane will mean we take our foot off the accelerator of CO2 reductions – where we've traditionally had a pretty poor record, write David Frame and Adrian Macey As 20,000 people get ready to converge on Glasgow for the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), there has been a flurry of reports and media coverage suggesting urgent action to reduce methane emissions is the best thing we can do for the climate right now. A recent joint United States-European Union pledge on methane, which other countries are being encouraged to join, aims at a 30 percent reduction in methane by 2030. The argument is that because methane is very potent in the short term, reducing it now will give us a big hit on warming, or that it somehow buys time for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2). If it’s not in competition with action on longer-lived gases, it’s a good idea to reduce methane. It’s a very bad idea to increase it because of its strong short-term effects on temperature. However, CO2 dominates not only the overall level of warming but also the speed of warming. Early methane reductions can at best shave a few tenths of a degree off peak warming and slow the rate of warming a little.” [Newsroom, 10/14/21 (-)]