Market forces halved methane emissions from Uinta Basin oil and gas
wells; but that's not the whole story
Longest continuously-monitored methane emissions record shows how market forces and oilfield practices can impact greenhouse gas emissions

Date:
November 16, 2021
Source:
University of Utah
Summary:
Since 2015, researchers have been tracking emissions from oil and
gas wells and report that, over that time, emissions from the region
have fallen by half. But more analysis of leak rates shows that the
oil and gas industry has a ways to go in stopping methane leaks,
which impact the climate and human health and can impose costs on
Utah's economy.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
As important as emissions of the greenhouse gas methane are in the
climate conversation, recently factoring prominently in the recent COP26 conference in Glasgow, researchers have painfully little long-term data
on emissions from wells and other oil and gas infrastructure. That makes answering questions about the sources and magnitudes of emissions, as
well as year-to-year trends across an entire production region, difficult.


========================================================================== Answers are starting to come from Utah's Uinta Basin, home to possibly
the longest continuous methane monitoring site in an oil and gas-producing region.

Since 2015, researchers have been tracking emissions from oil and gas
wells and report that, over that time, emissions from the region have
fallen by half.

But more analysis of leak rates shows that the oil and gas industry has
a ways to go in stopping methane leaks, which impact the climate and
human health and can impose costs on Utah's economy.

"Our work in the Uinta Basin shows that the methane emissions can change
over multiple years," says professor John Lin, of the University of
Utah Department of Atmospheric Sciences, "and it is important to bring
a long-term perspective and monitor these emissions over multiple years
as well." "The earth has only one atmosphere," says research associate professor Seth Lyman, director of the Bingham Research Center at Utah
State University's Uintah Basin campus, "and emissions in one area can
impact air quality and climate across the globe. Oil and natural gas
facilities are not evenly distributed around the state or around the
world, but climate impacts from fossil fuels are not dependent on the
location of emissions." The study is published in Scientific Reports
and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) and a subcontract from the University of Arizona.



========================================================================== Monitoring in the Uinta Basin Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with
around 85 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide over
the first 20 years it's in the atmosphere.

Methane has a tremendous potential to absorb infrared energy, which it
then re- directs back to the Earth's surface, thereby trapping the heat
and warming the planet.

Methane is the "gas" part of oil and gas production. Because it's hard
to keep every component of the gas production process airtight, methane
can leak from wells, pipelines -- anywhere along the way.

It can also react in the atmosphere to form ozone, which is where Lin
and his colleagues from the University of Utah, Utah State University
and West Texas A&M University come into the story. In the early 2010s, researchers were studying high levels of wintertime ozone pollution
in the Uinta Basin. One study involved flying an aircraft-based sensor
over the basin, home to around 10,000 oil and gas wells. Aircraft-based measurements are good, but they're only a snapshot of a moment in time.

"I wanted to compare estimates from ground-based observations against
the aircraft estimates and see how the emissions change over multiple
years," Lin says.



==========================================================================
In 2015, with funding from NOAA, the team installed the first of what
would become three sensors in the basin. It was good timing -- after
years of booming oil and gas production, oil prices began to fluctuate
and fell off by the 2020s, affecting production in the region and giving
the researchers a glimpse into how economic forces and methane emissions
were related.

How and why emissions fell Between 2015 and 2020, the researchers
observed, methane emissions in the Uinta Basin approximately
halved. Natural gas production also fell to around half of its peak, as
fossil fuel prices collapsed after 2014. This initial result is good news
-- less methane in the air is good for the climate and for human health.

But the researchers also noted that the amount of methane still leaking
from the remaining wells in 2020 was about six to eight percent of the
produced natural gas, about the same as it was in 2015.

"This means that the leak rate has stayed at a constant -- albeit high --
rate, even with decreases in natural gas production," Lin says. This
result was surprising because previous research had suggested that lower-production wells would leak a higher proportion of methane. "This
may account for the high leak rate in general in the Uinta Basin since the average Uinta well produces less gas compared to many other counterparts
around the U.S.," he says. "However, it was nonetheless surprising
that the leak rate did not increase as the Uinta wells decreased in production." The researchers ruled out regulation as contributing to
the emissions decline since Environmental Protection Agency regulations
in the past few years applied only to new wells. Surveys of some of the companies in the Uinta Basin did show that one company voluntarily took
action to detect and repair leaks, but the extent of such voluntary
action is unknown.

What methane leaks cost us So if methane emissions decreased with
a drop in gas production, does that mean emissions might go up if
production rebounds? Maybe, Lin says but adds that leak detection and
repair technologies have been improving in recent years, so the methane emissions could even decrease in the future as production increases.

"This will depend on decisions made by individual companies, as well
as on changes that have occurred or that may occur in the regulatory landscape," says Lyman.

Just as economic forces impacted oil and gas production and methane
emissions in recent years, continued leaks can impose their own expenses, particularly on Utah's economy. Lyman says that the majority of crude oil processed in Utah's refineries comes from the Uinta Basin. Beyond the
climate implications, leaking methane is wasted energy (about three to
five percent of all energy produced in the basin, the study estimates),
which increases costs for companies.

Also, leaking methane impacts Uinta Basin air quality. "Besides the
obvious (and more important) health impacts to residents of the Basin, air quality problems lead to increased regulation of oil and gas development,
which increases costs, and those costs are passed on to consumers,"
Lyman says.

Hopefully, this study inspires other oil and gas regions in
the U.S. and around the world to conduct their own continuous
monitoring, says Erik Crosman, assistant professor at West Texas
A&M University. "We need a detailed understanding of how methane
emissions are evolving," he says, "and observations like those
we conducted in the Uinta Basin help toward filling in those gaps." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Utah. Original written
by Paul Gabrielsen.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. John C. Lin, Ryan Bares, Benjamin Fasoli, Maria Garcia, Erik
Crosman,
Seth Lyman. Declining methane emissions and steady, high leakage
rates observed over multiple years in a western US oil/gas
production basin.

Scientific Reports, 2021; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-01721-5 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211116103123.htm

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