[dohboi]

BREAKING: The EPA Will Limit Methane From Existing Oil And Gas Facilities

The EPA will limit methane emissions from existing oil and gas facilities — a huge move by the federal agency, announced in conjunction with President Obama’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday.
...
The EPA will start the formal process of developing the rule next month, while Canada expects to have a proposed rule in 2017. On a call with reporters Thursday, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the agency will start work immediately. The first step will be requiring oil and gas companies to provide information on their methane emissions.

“It’s a really complex industry with hundreds of thousands of emissions sources,” McCarthy said. When asked whether the new rule would be able to move forward before the end of Obama’s term, she said the agency “will do whatever we can to move forward in reductions of greenhouse gases from all sources.”

Environmentalists have been calling for methane emissions reductions for years. A previously announced rule by the EPA covered only new oil and gas facilities — this new addition will greatly increase expected reductions from the sector.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/0 ... g-sources/

[ROCKMAN]

That's the EPA for you: hours ahead when seconds count. LOL. Not sure about other states but Texas and LA have had very strick regs and monitoring of air quality at well sites for many years. Just as the feds have had on offshore facilities that have produced billions of bbls of oil and trillions of cuff of NG. I would bet stronger then anything the EPA comes up with.

[ennui2]

Looks like the next supreme court battle, oh, right, there IS no supreme court now, thanks to the GOP.

[Plantagenet]

Looks like the next supreme court battle, oh, right, there IS no supreme court now

?????

It will take the EPA a year or so to develop the new rules and any court case over the new rules would takes more years to go through the lower courts and reach the Scotus.

[dohboi]

"strick regs"

That's of course what they call a technical, specialist's term in the trades, right???

[PeakOiler]

I know for a fact that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality doesn't even include methane in their GC/MS matrix. The lightest hydrocarbon analyzed is ethane.

--A former TCEQ employee...

See http://www.tceq.texas.gov/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/agc_monthly_summary.pl for the target compounds.

[PeakOiler]

Methane leaks in Texas are worse than California's:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/unstoppable-texas-gas-leaks-worse-than-californias-media-silent/214191/

Every hour, natural gas facilities in North Texas’ Barnett Shale region emit thousands of tons of methane — a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — and a slate of noxious pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and benzene.

Due to a scarcity of air quality monitoring stations, with only five permanent monitors to cover Eagle Ford’s nearly 20,000 square miles, state officials simply don’t know the extent of pollutants in the air. Many facilities are permitted to police themselves, and aren’t required to submit those findings. Not that regulators would have an easy time enforcing a reporting mandate, as the “Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn’t even know some of these facilities exist.”

[PeakOiler]

In case you don't know how the EPA operates, the EPA does not directly monitor emissions, but grants money to state agencies (such as the TCEQ) for monitoring operations. The TCEQ in turn asks, but does not require, the oil and gas industry to report data. So of course they don't, simply because of the expense of buying equipment to measure methane and other pollutants.

IMO, the EPA is toothless.

In addtion, if you read the article I linked to above,

Texas lawmakers are often personally tied to the industry, as “nearly one in four state legislators, or his or her spouse, has a financial interest in at least one energy company active in the Eagle Ford,” according to an analysis of personal financial forms by CPI cited by the study.

And as you all are probably aware, former Governor Rick Perry slashed the TCEQ's budget. The article linked above stated:

David Sterling, chair of the University of North Texas Health Science Center, told InsideClimate News, “As much as I would like to believe that industry can police itself, history has shown that that has not worked without sufficient oversight.” With TCEQ’s budget having fallen 34 percent between 2010 and 2014, it’s virtually impossible to imagine such oversight increasing in the future.

And as most of y'all are aware, Texas and the EPA do not like each other.

So I don't expect to see any changes with the EPA's new limits.

[Cog]

Looks like the next supreme court battle, oh, right, there IS no supreme court now, thanks to the GOP.

Obama has not nominated anyone yet. Place the blame where it is due instead of spouting leftist talking points.

[Tanada]

In case you don't know how the EPA operates, the EPA does not directly monitor emissions, but grants money to state agencies (such as the TCEQ) for monitoring operations. The TCEQ in turn asks, but does not require, the oil and gas industry to report data. So of course they don't, simply because of the expense of buying equipment to measure methane and other pollutants.

IMO, the EPA is toothless.

In addtion, if you read the article I linked to above,

Texas lawmakers are often personally tied to the industry, as “nearly one in four state legislators, or his or her spouse, has a financial interest in at least one energy company active in the Eagle Ford,” according to an analysis of personal financial forms by CPI cited by the study.

And as you all are probably aware, former Governor Rick Perry slashed the TCEQ's budget. The article linked above stated:

David Sterling, chair of the University of North Texas Health Science Center, told InsideClimate News, “As much as I would like to believe that industry can police itself, history has shown that that has not worked without sufficient oversight.” With TCEQ’s budget having fallen 34 percent between 2010 and 2014, it’s virtually impossible to imagine such oversight increasing in the future.

And as most of y'all are aware, Texas and the EPA do not like each other.

So I don't expect to see any changes with the EPA's new limits.

While the "oil industry" might not have a lot of methane monitoring equipment the "gas industry" certainly does. Every service tech has a handheld methane meter they use whenever a customer expresses concern over a leak. Unless all those meters are just fakes to placate the end user the industry has a cheap and easily deployed technology already in hand.

[ROCKMAN]

T - Every field roduction hand I run has a hand held. Almost cheap as dirt. LOL. A methane leak explodes: they might die. And here's a little known fact: small leaks are much more dangerous then big ones. A high concentration of methane won't explode. It's most explosive around 10% to 15%.

BTW the vast majority of methane leaks are from local distribution systems and home owners and not at the well head. They recently ran a mobile street survey .(NYC?) and found one significant leak every mile or so (?). They don't like to focus on this problem for the same reason they avoid the lead in water issue: it would cost many $billions to fix.

[PeakOiler]

BTW the vast majority of methane leaks are from local distribution systems and home owners and not at the well head. They recently ran a mobile street survey .(NYC?) and found one significant leak every mile or so (?). They don't like to focus on this problem for the same reason they avoid the lead in water issue: it would cost many $billions to fix.

I can't agree with that ROCKMAN. Did you read the quote above?:

Every hour natural gas facilities in North Texas’ Barnett Shale region emit thousands of tons of methane — a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide — and a slate of noxious pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and benzene.

You're telling us that home owners and local distribution systems are emitting more than that? Good God! This whole state might just go up in smoke if that were true. Show us or post a link to the data if that is true. And I don't think hand-held devices are used to monitor and report data to the EPA. Those are just for safety purposes, right? (And used in the company's best interest to avoid lawsuits if a production worker dies or is injured in an explosion, true?)

[PeakOiler]

One more anecdote:
A few years ago, the TCEQ began using an infrared camera showing VOCs from compressor stations on the mobile monitoring trips. The info was so damning, that the TCEQ was pressured (no pun intended) by the state government to stop that kind of monitoring.

See this: http://www.texassharon.com/2012/03/20/tceq-videos-show-voc-emissions-in-eagle-ford-shale/

[rockdoc123]

To my mind the only way this can work would be to have a measurement of airborne methane across the lease (portable canary units could be used I suppose) and then monitors on each wellhead and likely on the gathering systems. The technology is a bit different than the normal metering done on wellheads as it has to deal with very low emission rates. This will not be cheap and given most of the oil and gas operators in the country are struggling to keep their heads above water I can't see how an additional few dollars to their operating costs will be anything but disastrous.

I agree with Rockman. You can't just jump to the conclusion that methane is coming out of wellheads, gathering systems, plants etc without being able to actually point to evidence it is not coming from anywhere else. Clear baselines would need to be established for each and every potential source. I suspect the cows aren't going to be particularly happy having a remote terminal unit attached to their backsides!

[PeakOiler]

To my mind the only way this can work would be to have a measurement of airborne methane across the lease (portable canary units could be used I suppose) and then monitors on each wellhead and likely on the gathering systems. The technology is a bit different than the normal metering done on wellheads as it has to deal with very low emission rates. This will not be cheap and given most of the oil and gas operators in the country are struggling to keep their heads above water I can't see how an additional few dollars to their operating costs will be anything but disastrous.

I agree with Rockman. You can't just jump to the conclusion that methane is coming out of wellheads, gathering systems, plants etc without being able to actually point to evidence it is not coming from anywhere else. Clear baselines would need to be established for each and every potential source. I suspect the cows aren't going to be particularly happy having a remote terminal unit attached to their backsides!

Check the videos I linked to in the post above after you posted.

[Tanada]

We are frequently told by certain Environmentalists that cow belches and rice farming are major contributors to global methane emissions. This raises a serious issue of determining the source of any particular methane discovered unless you can track it at the point of origin. Arkansas has large rice fields, half of Florida and Louisiana are natural swamps with their own high emissions and so on and so forth.

If you can track it back to a specific well that is great, but if you are just monitoring the air at say 200 feet above ground how do you identify the source of the emission?

[PeakOiler]

We are frequently told by certain Environmentalists that cow belches and rice farming are major contributors to global methane emissions. This raises a serious issue of determining the source of any particular methane discovered unless you can track it at the point of origin. Arkansas has large rice fields, half of Florida and Louisiana are natural swamps with their own high emissions and so on and so forth.

If you can track it back to a specific well that is great, but if you are just monitoring the air at say 200 feet above ground how do you identify the source of the emission?

Did you watch any of the videos I linked to? It's pretty clear where those emissions are coming from.

[Tanada]

We are frequently told by certain Environmentalists that cow belches and rice farming are major contributors to global methane emissions. This raises a serious issue of determining the source of any particular methane discovered unless you can track it at the point of origin. Arkansas has large rice fields, half of Florida and Louisiana are natural swamps with their own high emissions and so on and so forth.

If you can track it back to a specific well that is great, but if you are just monitoring the air at say 200 feet above ground how do you identify the source of the emission?

Did you watch any of the videos I linked to? It's pretty clear where those emissions are coming from.

Yes I did and yes THOSE emissions are clearly coming from that point source. Did you read what I wrote? We need to do a survey of ALL sources to determine what percentage is coming from each type of source, natural vs man made, which type of man made as in fossil fuel extraction and distribution compared to livestock compared to artificial flooded land compared to landfill emissions?

[PeakOiler]

We are frequently told by certain Environmentalists that cow belches and rice farming are major contributors to global methane emissions. This raises a serious issue of determining the source of any particular methane discovered unless you can track it at the point of origin. Arkansas has large rice fields, half of Florida and Louisiana are natural swamps with their own high emissions and so on and so forth.

If you can track it back to a specific well that is great, but if you are just monitoring the air at say 200 feet above ground how do you identify the source of the emission?

Did you watch any of the videos I linked to? It's pretty clear where those emissions are coming from.

Yes I did and yes THOSE emissions are clearly coming from that point source. Did you read what I wrote? We need to do a survey of ALL sources to determine what percentage is coming from each type of source, natural vs man made, which type of man made as in fossil fuel extraction and distribution compared to livestock compared to artificial flooded land compared to landfill emissions?

Yes I did, but the topic of the thread is pertaining to Oil and Gas facilities, not other sources (I was trying to stay on topic), and the point I was trying to make is that the EPA seemingly does not have the power to enforce those emissions.

And although the IR cameras show VOC emissions, it is only a qualitative assessment, not quantitative, but still pretty damning.

I did come across this webpage if we want to compare methane emissions from ruminant animals such as cows:
https://muchadoaboutclimate.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/how-much-methane-does-a-cow-actually-produce/

Is there a thread on comparing methane emission sources? I haven't searched po.com for such a thread.

[Tanada]

There is a livestock methane thread but nobody has posted on it for the last almost two years for lack of news on the topic to discuss.

methane-from-livestock-merged-t67608-160.html

Perhaps someone could take that FLIR camera and fly over a pasture with grass fed beef and another with confined grain feeding and compare the emission rates. From what I have read it is the CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) aka feedlots that cause the methane generation while the grass fed beef do not have the same kind of, well, emissions LOL. I would like a scientific flyover to confirm that because I know how many 'facts' you read in print are exaggerations, distortions or even outright lies.