Hidden Menace: Massive methane leaks speed up climate change

Lenorah (US), Jul 28 (AP) To naked eye, Mako Compressor Station outside dusty West Texas crossros of Lenorah appears unremarkable, similar to tens of thousands of oil and gas operations scattered throughout oil-rich Permian Basin.

What's not visible through chain-link fence is plume of invisible gas, primarily methane, billowing from gleaming white storage tanks up into cloudless blue sky.

Mako station, owned by a subsidiary of West Texas Gas Inc., was observed releasing an estimated 870 kilograms of methane  an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas  into atmosphere each hour. That's equivalent 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 Permian conducted by Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA.

group documented massive amounts of methane venting into atmosphere from oil and gas operations across Permian, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along Texas-New Mexico border.

Hundreds of those sites were seen spewing gas over and over again. Ongoing leaks, gushers, going unfixed.

We see same sites active from year to year. It's not just month to month or season to season, said Riley Duren, a research scientist at University of Arizona who les Carbon Mapper.

Methane's earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger over 20 years than carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

Congress and Environmental Protection Agency have largely failed to regulate invisible gas. That leaves it up to oil and gas producers  in some cases very companies who have been fighting regulations  to cut methane emissions on ir own.

Associated Press took coordinates of 533 super-emitting sites identified by Carbon Mapper and cross-referenced locations with public records to piece toger corporations most likely responsible.

Just 10 companies owned at least 164 of those sites, according to an AP analysis of Carbon Mapper's data. West Texas Gas owned 11.

methane released by se companies will be disrupting climate for deces, contributing to more heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires and floods.

re's now nearly three times as much methane in air than re was before industrial times. year 2021 saw worst single increase ever.

Last October, AP journalists visited more than two dozen sites flagged as persistent methane super emitters by Carbon Mapper with a FLIR infrared camera and recorded video of large plumes of hydrocarbon gas containing methane escaping from pipeline compressors, tank batteries, flare stacks and or production infrastructure.

In dition to West Texas Gas's Mako site, AP observed a large plume of gas escaping from tanks at a WTG compressor station about 15 miles away in Sale Ranch oil field. Carbon Mapper estimated that emissions from that site averaged about 410 kilos of methane an hour.

In a statement, Midland-based West Texas Gas said it routinely conducts its own overflights with gas detection equipment and within last six months h eir repaired or upgred nine of super emitting sites that AP asked about, including Mako.

company was actively dressing anor site, though it declined to provide specifics. WTG said it inspected last site and found no leak.

AP found Targa Resources, a Houston-based natural gas storage, processing and distribution company, was closest operator to 30 sites that were emitting a combined 3,000 kilograms of methane per hour. Targa did not respond to a detailed list of questions from AP.

Reducing air emissions from oil and natural gas sector is a top priority for ministration and for EPA, said Toms Carbonell, EPA's deputy assistant ministrator for stationary sources.

Methane, he ded, is helping drive impacts that communities across country are alrey seeing every day, including heat waves and wildfires and sea level rise.

But proposed rules to dress emissions most oil and gas sites are still under review, and if implemented will likely face legal challenges.

To track emissions, US government keeps an inventory of methane released into atmosphere. Those figures are used by policy makers and scientists to help calculate how much planet will warm.

AP found government database often fails to account for true rate of emissions observed in Permian.

For example, Devon Energy reported releasing methane equivalent to 42,000 metric tons of CO2 for a year of operations in Permian Basin. AP's analysis, using detected emissions, shows y would emit that much in just 46 days.

A spokesperson for Devon said company is committed to reducing its methane emissions and being transparent about its progress.

EPA could not provide AP with a single example of a polluter being fined or cited for failing to report, or under-reporting emissions.

At an international climate summit in November, US and more than 100 or countries signed on to a Global Methane Pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030.

To meet that deline, American oil and gas industry would have to reduce emissions at a rate far beyond anything currently seen.

industry says it is working toward that goal.

To be able to capture more methane emissions makes sense from a business perspective, said Frank Macchiarola, a senior vice president at American Petroleum Institute, an industry tre group. "It's product that we ultimately want to bring to market.

But climate scientists and environmentalists warn industry's incremental efforts are nowhere near enough to avoid dire consequences for humanity.

Methane is responsible for 25 per cent of today's global warming, and we can't limit future warming to two degrees Celsius if we don't drastically cut those emissions, said Ilissa Ocko, a senior climate scientist at Environmental Defence Fund, a group that campaigns for climate action.

We have tools to cut methane in half and faster we do that, better off our climate and communities will be.