U.S. oil and gas industry methane emissions four times higher than officially recorded

New data from a project involving New Zealand shows that the US oil and gas industry emits much more of the potent greenhouse gas methane than officials have estimated.

Campaigners said data showed using gas in factories and home appliances was no better for the climate than using coal, meaning it was “pointless” to use gas to replace coal.

But New Zealand’s oil and gas industry says it is much better regulated than the industry in parts of the United States and there is less chance of unusual emissions.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said New Zealand’s way of reporting methane emissions from oil and gas production was overly cautious and less likely to be underestimated than the US system.

However, without air measurements, there is no way to know if we are missing emissions, say US measurement researchers.

Those measurements, which could come from a methane-detecting satellite funded by New Zealand, are still years away, according to people involved in the project.

Aircraft and satellites

The U.S. findings come from MethaneAIR, a company that has installed sensors on aircraft flying over the United States and taking readings at most oil and gas fields.

The project is a trial run for the MethaneSAT satellite project, which is partly funded by the New Zealand government and is currently taking readings over a much larger area of ​​the Earth. The project aims to cover 80% of global oil and gas production in its first year in orbit.

Steven Wofsy, a Harvard professor involved in both methane projects, said the average methane loss rate from U.S. oil and gas fields is 1.6%, four times higher than reported in the U.S. National Greenhouse Gas Inventory and eight times higher than the industry’s 0.2% loss target.

Professor Wolfsey said not all of the leaking gas came from accidental leaks in the pipeline; some appeared to be due to well maintenance or deliberate leaks.

Older fields, smaller operators and fields whose primary purpose is to produce oil rather than gas tend to perform worse.

“A lot of this is not leaks, a lot of this is actual operations,” Wolfsey said.

“These are things that people are actually doing. When this happens in the field, the companies don’t know exactly how much methane emissions there are, they’re not measuring it,” he said.

“These activities were estimated based on a spreadsheet, and it’s clear that the spreadsheet underestimated.”

Maryann Sargent, a senior scientist at Harvard University who is also involved in the development of the MethaneAIR and MethaneSAT projects, said studies continue to find that for a variety of reasons, measurements of gas fields show higher methane emissions than officially reported. She said scientists only partially understand the drivers.

“The actual losses we see in the atmosphere are much higher,” Dr Sargent said.

“One problem is that you have wells that have different ages, so when you first tap the well it produces a lot of gas, and then later in the life of the well it might produce much less gas but leak the same amount, so the fractional loss rate is going to be higher.”

‘They just don’t know’

New Zealand’s gas fields are nearing the end of their life, causing gas shortages faster than expected and leaving many gas users unsure where to get their energy.

The oil and gas industry here says they have much better regulation than in some parts of the United States and will have fewer noncompliant emissions.

John Carnegie of Energy Resources New Zealand said he believed the likelihood of a methane leak in New Zealand was low because there were “far fewer” wells, there was strict monitoring and a robust regulatory regime, and companies had to pay for methane leaks and other gases under an emissions trading system.

The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment said New Zealand’s official estimates of oil and gas production losses were high compared with those in the United States, so were unlikely to be underreported.

The ministry said routine emissions from oil and gas production were estimated using a spreadsheet method, while gas field operators self-reported their intentional emissions and flaring of methane.

Without measuring the air, there’s no way to know if we’re missing any methane emissions, said Suzi Kerr, an economist at the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which runs MethaneAIR and MethaneSAT.

“They just don’t know, and that’s the problem,” she said.

“The reason EDF does so much work is because you just don’t know. There are sources we haven’t even considered or don’t know how big they are, but before MethaneAIR we’ve done studies in dozens of countries around the world that systematically showed this underreporting.”

New Zealand’s government is considering increasing its gas supply in a bid to lower the country’s global warming emissions, arguing that gas produces less global warming emissions than coal for the same amount of energy consumed.

For example, when gas supplies are low and hydro lake levels are low, Huntly Power Station burns more coal.

But Kerr said studies show using more natural gas is not the solution to climate problems.

“That argument simply doesn’t hold up in New Zealand. The comparison in New Zealand is not coal and gas, it’s gas and renewables. New Zealand no longer needs to use coal. I know there are some industrial uses, like dairy farming, that still use coal, but they can go straight into power generation.” (Kerr acknowledges that gas will still be used for power generation for some time).

350 New Zealand climate activist Adam Currie cited studies from several US universities, including Brown and Harvard, which found that natural gas would warm the planet as fast as coal if just 0.2% of the methane gas leaked during production.

“We have to worry not only about the natural gas we burn, but also about leaks that occur as we move the natural gas from the ground to where it’s used,” Currie said.

Currently, there is no equivalent to MethaneAIR monitoring New Zealand’s oil and gas fields, so Kerr and her colleagues do not have any data on fugitive emissions from New Zealand.

Alex Geddes of the National Water and Atmospheric Administration, a scientist involved in the New Zealand Methane Satellite project, said the satellite would observe offshore Taranaki, but that was not the first thing it would do.

MethaneSAT’s first focus areas in New Zealand are areas with high levels of cow burping, starting with the Waikato region.

“The Taranaki region (gas producing area) is another one of our main targets for future missions, but for New Zealand we initially wanted to do an agriculture-focused activity and the Waikato is the best place to do that,” Geddes said.

Geddes has been installing ground sensors in fields on Waikato dairy farms so that NIWA scientists can cross-check their readings with those from satellites.

Satellite and ground readings will also be cross-checked with the New Zealand government’s estimate of agricultural methane emissions, which is considered strong compared with most government estimates.

The first results from MethaneSAT were originally due to be released in mid-2024, but Harvard scientists say the first research results will now not be released until early 2025.

Wolfsey said scientists hope to take multiple readings at each site before publishing results.