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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.
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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.

ennui2 wrote:Looks like the next supreme court battle, oh, right, there IS no supreme court now

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.”

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.

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.

ennui2 wrote:Looks like the next supreme court battle, oh, right, there IS no supreme court now, thanks to the GOP.

PeakOiler wrote: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.

ROCKMAN wrote: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.

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.

rockdoc123 wrote: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!

Tanada wrote: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 wrote:

Tanada wrote: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 wrote:

PeakOiler wrote:

Tanada wrote: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?