[HN Gopher] Big Oil methane emissions: 'significant gap' between...
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Big Oil methane emissions: 'significant gap' between reality and
reporting
Author : samizdis
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-08-17 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| Geee wrote:
| One way to reduce methane emissions is to burn it and generate
| electricity for Bitcoin mining. It gives a direct incentive to
| try to contain all methane. There's an estimate that all methane
| that is currently flared or released would generate enough
| electricity to run the whole Bitcoin network 10 times over.
| Bitcoin mining is suitable for this, because no costly
| infrastructure is needed for transporting the methane (which
| would happen anyway if it was economical). Bitcoin miners can be
| located in remote areas near the oil fields.
|
| See https://www.crusoeenergy.com/digital-flare-mitigation
| pierre wrote:
| So instead of methane that will stay ~10 year (GWP of 2.8-3.4)
| in the atmosphere, you release C02 (GWP of 1) that will stay
| ~10k year. So short term (for ~10year) you reduce warming by
| ~3.5, if your look long term (10k years) you increase warming
| by 285x by doing that.
|
| CH4 + 2 O2 - CO2 + 2 H2O
|
| Not sure I will call that a win for the climate. (and this
| energy could be put to better use than burning it on crypto)
| Geee wrote:
| I've been under the impression that methane is way worse for
| climate than carbon dioxide. And that's why most of the
| methane is usually flared, but maybe there are other reasons.
|
| There's a company called Crusoe Energy [0] who develops this,
| and they use the energy for other computational tasks as
| well. However, bitcoin mining is the most straightforward and
| scalable way to convert energy into money.
|
| [0] https://www.crusoeenergy.com
| [deleted]
| bequanna wrote:
| But isn't the challenge actually capturing, storing, and
| transporting the methane? At a minimum, you'll need the first 2
| even if you colocate your generator and mining rig near the
| methane source. I guess I would be skeptical that this is cost
| effective vs. other cheap electricity sources.
| Geee wrote:
| Most of it is already captured and burned, without using it
| to generate electricity. It's called flaring. And if they can
| get money from it, it should make sense to try to capture
| more.
| oblib wrote:
| Oil companies not telling the truth about the environmental
| impact of their processing should be dealt with in a way that
| take all of the profits, and then some, but since most all
| politicians here have taken money from them the odds of that
| happening seem very low.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Old news, just FYI
| https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Chevron-redubs-ship-...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Something that needs to happen more often is corporate abusers
| need to be fined into bankruptcy, shareholders wiped out,
| ownership transferred to the people (state) and kept operating
| while sold or broken up into pieces during bankruptcy
| restructuring. i.e. real consequences for boards and
| shareholders that aren't just small dents in quarterly profits
| while minimizing consequences for the more ordinary workers
| cwkoss wrote:
| Should the death penalty be on the table for executives in
| particularly egregious acts of pollution? Environmental
| destruction irreparably harms public commons, including the
| lives of millions of future humans.
|
| These people are making millions and it doesn't seem like
| current enforcement has the desired deterrent effect. Slaps
| on the wrist with small fines don't seem effective. How often
| do executives get prison time for serious pollution?
|
| Is there a fair legal test that you believe would justify the
| death penalty for egregious acts of pollution where an
| executive knowingly participated in the cover up? Currently
| it feels like the commons is being exploited without
| consequence. I can't help but think that executing just a
| couple of the worst offenders would make violators much more
| cautious and curtail this destructive behavior.
| gruez wrote:
| >Should the death penalty be on the table for executives in
| particularly egregious acts of pollution
|
| because that worked so well to deter murderers?
|
| >These people are making millions and it doesn't seem like
| current enforcement has the desired deterrent effect. Slaps
| on the wrist with small fines don't seem effective.
|
| I don't understand why the logical progression from "small
| fines" is "death penalty".
| andrepd wrote:
| That this doesn't happen is all the more proof we live in a
| plutocracy with a veneer of democracy.
| bboylen wrote:
| What?
|
| How on earth would the government seizing control of one of
| the largest industries in the country make us more of a
| democracy?
|
| We would then be in company with countries such as
| Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, famously democratic countries
| colechristensen wrote:
| Companies _have_ been destroyed by courts, but very few,
| very infrequently.
| [deleted]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And actual liability for directors. None of this "oh, just
| take all my shareholder's money for my mistakes in exchange
| for jail time"
| samvega_ wrote:
| What you're describing is practically impossible in a
| capitalist state, both due to political unwillingness and by
| juridical obstructions. One has to realize that the main
| function of a capitalist state is to secure private capital
| and facilitate profits for the capitalist class, in short -
| to preserve the class hierarchy.
| sekh60 wrote:
| Seems anything being remotely anti-capitalist gets
| downvoted here.
| ccn0p wrote:
| no, just comments that draw conclusions based off
| conjecture.
| breakyerself wrote:
| That sounds like Utopia compared to what we have.
| convolvatron wrote:
| it would be irresponsible of a corporate officer to not optimize
| for profit as decreased operating expenses vs the risk of
| environmental litigation.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not only irresponsible but a signal of corruption. Corporations
| should be controlled by laws and their enforcement, not the
| arbitrary political whims of the people working in them.
| mperham wrote:
| Society bears the cost, the profit goes to the shareholders.
| Capitalism in a nutshell.
| drocer88 wrote:
| Communism also : https://search.brave.com/search?q=pollution%
| 20in%20soviet%20...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The USSR was a state capitalist system, not sure where you
| got the 'communism' ideea. Something vaguely socialist
| happened during the original bolshevik revolution, but
| Lenin quickly put a stop to that and restored
| economic/industrial control from the soviets to the state.
|
| Russia today is a capitalist, kleptocratic oligarchic
| state, highly dependent on fossil fuels.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| USSR is listed as a communist state here: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Communist_state#List_of_commun...
| _Microft wrote:
| This reminds me of a cartoon.
|
| In front of the skyline of a derelict city, a man in a torn
| suit and a few children in similarly ragged clothes are sitting
| at a campfire. The man says: _"Yes, the planet got destroyed.
| But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value
| for shareholders."_.
|
| You can find it here: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
| ansible wrote:
| And in one sentence, you have explained why actually-free
| market capitalism must not be allowed to exist, and instead
| must be heavily regulated to allow other stakeholders to have a
| say in the operation of any company.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Fiduciary duty being the highest moral imperative is quite
| problematic.
| gruez wrote:
| >Fiduciary duty being the highest moral imperative
|
| But it's not. That's what laws are for. If you're just going
| to expect people to be moral voluntarily you're going to have
| a bad time, because there inevitably will be people who have
| lower standards of morality than you'd want.
| convolvatron wrote:
| have we managed to pass any laws to stop these companies
| from saving a few bucks to not manage their methane
| emissions? no.
|
| i think its because we have actually internalized this idea
| as a society.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The idea that corporations should regulate their own
| behavior without the threat of force/punishment? I agree.
| Self-regulation is a thing you lobby for in order to
| prevent actual regulation.
| convolvatron wrote:
| partially. the idea that the market is _the most
| important_ thing, and that companies know best about how
| to optimize, and that any time anyone tries to modulate
| their behavior for the social good - it turns out to be
| counterproductive.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Irresponsible to what? Their shareholders? Or life on planet
| Earth?
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| To the most important thing - his bank account.
| andrepd wrote:
| /s?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "decreased operating expenses vs the risk of environmental
| litigation."
|
| Then we have to increase the expense of environmental
| violations by a lot to make sure that it would be irresponsible
| to ignore regulations.
| thedmstdmstdmst wrote:
| I'm sorry but environmental litigation is not a simple thing
| any corporate officer shrugs concern for. They simply try not
| to know about those things or offload the risk to third party's
| etc.
| skyfaller wrote:
| If that is the only possible result with corporations, then
| continued human survival is not compatible with the continued
| existence of corporations.
|
| It is possible that e.g. benefit corporations may do a better
| job than standard corporations, but I have my doubts that it is
| possible to make corporations consistently account for negative
| externalities under capitalism.
| handrous wrote:
| "Responsible" performance of a role in an organization doesn't
| put one above judgement for one's actions, _at all_ , which
| may, though correct from a very narrow perspective, be
| horrible. The most obvious & crystal-clear examples would
| Godwin the thread, but I trust the idea's simple enough not to
| need illustration by example.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| In that statement is inherent the fact that unless you put a
| dollar figure on an item it does not matters to capitalism.
| this is not a criticism of capitalism, just that how this
| works. what needs to happen is that we provide a value
| assessment for 'common goods' like not polluting the rivers or
| atmosphere. then and only then capitalism will start to care
| about them. one way of doing that is to create instruments like
| carbon taxes which models cost of 'making life worse for
| everybody' which is currently assumed to be zero.
| arbuge wrote:
| There may be more to this story. I believe "Big Oil" actually
| wanted tighter control of methane emissions to remain in place
| when the previous administration proposed relaxing them. The
| problem may be with smaller producers, who would be favored by
| that relaxation if they have less resources for compliance than
| bigger companies do:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/901863874/trumps-methane-roll...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yes agree - I posted here about methane, small "cowboy" oil and
| gas in West Texas, and some conflict with Big Oil at the time..
| remote methane detection using specialized sensors and Deep
| Learning on the sensing data, has pulled the kimono from this
| situation.. Big Oil saw a political liability, and did advocate
| to that US Fed Administration to be strict, and the opposite
| happened. I very much appreciate the Daylight here on this
| topic, much needed
| pueblito wrote:
| I'm sure the smaller producers are lying about methane too.
| Call it a hunch.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is truth to the GP post.
|
| Large producers have a tendency to _prefer_ stronger
| regulations, especially new regulations because they have a
| competitive advantage in being able to implement them fully
| while their smaller competitors will be more likely to
| struggle and ultimately fail and sell cheap to the bigger
| fish.
|
| In other words for a lot of regulations a considerable
| portion of the cost to implement is fixed and does not scale
| with org size which tends to put smaller operators at a
| further competitive disadvantage.
| thedmstdmstdmst wrote:
| I think it's more the large producers are global companies
| who have exposure to investors with different goals than
| smaller companies who have investors essentially looking at
| them like the lotto.
| deepinsand wrote:
| I've spent a good amount of time on oil wells, and this was
| always obvious. Methane passively leaks from the ground of most
| wells, and is usually related to the quality of the cement
| reinforcements. There is no real incentive for oil companies to
| use higher quality materials.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Their Co2 emissions from flaring unused methane is also
| significant. This company has some kind of live map of them:
|
| https://www.flaringmonitor.org/
| yborg wrote:
| Not that you want any extra greenhouse gas emissions, but
| methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas on short timescales,
| 100x over 5 years. CO2 is the lesser of the two evils.
| michael1999 wrote:
| This is why I've always preferred a metered tax on pollutants
| over a regulated "limit". Without revenue attached, there is
| less-than-zero budget to measure and audit in the firm _or_ the
| regulator. But with a metered tax (on methane, co2, benzene,
| etc), weak or fraudulent self reporting become back-taxes owed
| with penalties which tends to attract interested headcount.
| CompelTechnic wrote:
| I spent months trying to get a valve to pass the API 622 fugitive
| emissions test. It never passed before I got laid off. I suspect
| that valve stem packing for valves at methane plants is one of
| the leading contributors for this.
| whall6 wrote:
| Which number is reality? How can we know what is the true number.
| We are only confident to a _degree_.
|
| I get that there is an obvious incentive for o&g to bias
| downward, but we shouldn't lead ourselves astray thinking that an
| outside audit is 100% accurate. It's useful but we shouldn't hang
| our hats on it.
|
| Also, I get this is tangential to the true point, but it just
| bothers me when numbers derived from estimation are labeled as
| "reality".
| nend wrote:
| I mean, I get your point. The underlying data and studies
| should be analyzed and confirmed. But as the article mentions
| this is not the only study showing an under reporting of
| emissions, and as you said oil companies have obvious
| incentives to under report.
|
| So the question is now "how much is being under reported", but
| not "are oil companies under reporting".
|
| >Which number is reality?
|
| Not the one the oil companies are telling us, which should be
| alarming.
| amelius wrote:
| Europe (ESA) has a satellite program that can measure methane
| emissions from space.
|
| https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Coperni...
| adamking wrote:
| California also launching one soon.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/califo...
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