[HN Gopher] Texas produces twice as much methane as better regul...
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Texas produces twice as much methane as better regulated neighbor,
study finds
Author : webmaven
Score : 168 points
Date : 2023-11-08 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| Problem with title: "produces" refers to leakage (into the
| atmosphere) from oil & gas wells and associated equipment.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Aren't those byproducts of 'production'?
|
| Same as cow farts, muchacho.
| xienze wrote:
| Article doesn't really clarify if this is "twice as much per
| capita" or just "twice as much." If the latter, I'd say no duh,
| Texas has a much bigger oil and natural gas industry than New
| Mexico does.
| asfasfo wrote:
| It clarifies this in the 2nd paragraph: "sites in Texas have
| emitted double the amount of the gas than in New Mexico, per
| unit of production, since 2019"
| xienze wrote:
| Ah missed that, thanks.
| auspiv wrote:
| Natural gas (which is of course composed primarily of methane)
| free takeaway capacity from West Texas is super low. Pipelines
| are booked solid and and 1-2 new ones are being commissioned
| yearly (google search for 'Permian natural gas pipeline
| projects').
|
| Oil/gas companies generally never want to straight up vent (i.e.
| release directly into the atmosphere) natural gas. It gives no
| economic value. However, natural gas production is an inevitable
| byproduct of oil production, especially in the Permian basin
| shale plays, which can lead to either having to shut-in your oil
| well, or flare, or vent.
|
| I work for an oil/gas company that operates in the Permian. Our
| wells range from ~3000 standard cubic feet per barrel of oil to
| 10000. Some of our bigger wells produce >1000 barrels of oil per
| day, which corresponds to 3-10 million cubic feet of natural gas
| per day. We do not vent unless an emergency situation arises.
| Even for pigging and other procedures (blow downs, etc.), we
| capture the natural gas. We do flare if needed, but that is
| limited. Small amounts of gas gather at the top of oil tanks and
| rather than risk an explosion (due to lightning and other
| unpredictable things like that), the small amount of gas is
| flared. The state of TX has flare limits per day and per month on
| both a pad and well level.
|
| We have also electrified a very large portion of our operations,
| reducing the amount of natural gas burned to generate electricity
| (this happens all over the basin). All of our large gathering
| facilities but one are electric powered. This can be a challenge
| with gas compressors, which have traditionally been gas powered.
| Gas compressors are commonly in the 1500-3000 horsepower range
| each, and there are 4-12 per facility. That's a lot of
| electricity. One facility does have a gas generator powered
| component, which can be used to kick-start other facilities to
| get things going again in case of a major, multi-facility
| shutdown.
|
| Long story short - gas doesn't have a ton of value in the Permian
| basin. In decreasing order of preference, operators will want to
| 1) sell gas, 2) use it to run gas compressors or generators, 3)
| flare it, or 4) vent it.
|
| Some enterprising people have constructed trailers with natural
| gas generators powering bitcoin miners. This option can be
| appealing to operators who would otherwise be flaring/venting the
| natural gas. Not sure of the contract commercial terms but
| presumably it benefits both parties. Straight up burning methane
| is the same whether it is via flare or generator. Both are better
| than venting due to the increased greenhouse gas potential of
| methane vs CO2.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Direct methane fuel cells are in the lab, when they hot
| production you'll get >90% efficiency in electricity
| generation.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Unfortunately, they will require very pure methane. Methane
| purification probably won't be easy to do at well sites.
| auspiv wrote:
| It's not easy to in general. Gas plants typically operate
| via cryogenic processes. The boiling point of ethane at
| standard pressure is -128.2F, so you need to get below that
| to get everything but the methane to liquefy. -128.2F by
| itself isn't terribly difficult but doing so on a highly
| variable flow, at a well site with questionable power, with
| 100% reliability will be difficult.
|
| Gas plants typically also operate above atmospheric
| pressure because the boiling points are higher (meaning
| less cooling required). That, also by itself, isn't
| difficult, but does add complexity and cost.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| The practices you're describing largely seem sensible, but I
| think they are also beside the point made by the article,
| namely that Texas seems to emit more gas per unit of production
| than a neighbor.
|
| > gas doesn't have a ton of value in the Permian basin.
|
| You note this, but the assertion that selling or using the gas
| to run generators are top preferences for producers seems
| contradictory, or perhaps a bit oversimplified.
|
| If gas is abundant and has little value, I would expect there
| would also be little incentive to sell it when it isn't
| trivially easy to do so, or to store it for later use running
| compressors or generators. Cheap gas would mean venting or
| flaring are the least expensive option in more situations.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The fact that the economics of not-venting gas aren't great
| for operators is precisely an example of externalities and
| why they can't be handled effectively without financial
| incentives or equivalent regulation.
|
| Either you buy gas from Permian basin operators at inflated
| prices to make it worth capturing, or you make the cost of
| not capturing it high enough that it becomes worthwhile to
| capture. The latter is a classic Pigouvian tax. The former
| would be unpalatable to most voters (but a delicious
| opportunity for the oil and gas companies).
| auspiv wrote:
| There are a lot of nuances to assign the gas a value. Our
| electricity is apparently in the 5-6 cents per kWh range. I
| did the math recently and running a generator on site can cut
| that in half. But then you're in the business of running a
| fleet of hundreds of generators. Is it cheaper per kWh? Yes.
| But then factor in the cost of mechanics, techs, maintenance,
| etc. and that bring it close to even. You've also locked
| yourself into a bad spot if the price of natural gas spikes
| 3x like it did in summer 2022 with the Russia/Ukraine war and
| all of a sudden your self-generated electricity is far more
| expensive than utility and you can't sell any of your gas
| because you never build the gathering lines to get it to a
| pipeline.
| Ographer wrote:
| You're exactly right. I used to be a production engineer for
| an O&G company and new wells were usually ready to begin
| producing oil before the gas pipeline company had finished
| construction of the pipeline or the compressor station to
| operate it.
|
| Because of the time-value of money, they want to produce the
| oil ASAP so that they can reinvest the proceeds to drill new
| wells. This meant that we had to flare gas the maximum legal
| amount every day for months until the pipelines were
| completed. I had to keep track of how much we flared and tell
| them to shut the well in if we were getting close to the
| legal limit.
|
| Oil companies will ALWAYS pollute the maximum amount they are
| allowed by regulations when that is the most profitable
| solution.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > Straight up burning methane is the same whether it is via
| flare or generator.
|
| This isn't correct. Flaring can be fairly inefficient.
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/oil-industry-flaring...
|
| Even if you can make flaring more efficient, you're going to
| need a fairly hard stick to keep oil producers in line because
| flaring efficiently is a pure cost. On the other hand, running
| it through a generator presumably earns money, so is a carrot
| that businesses can pursue.
|
| The big stick approach might work fine in the US with a strong
| handed state, but methane emissions are a global problem, and
| most poor oil producers in regions with no big stick may not
| even bother flaring at all and just vent, whereas they might
| pursue more money.
| auspiv wrote:
| Interesting, I was not aware of the 91% vs 98% flaring vs
| combustion efficiency. Seems like a relatively recent finding
| based on the Ars article date.
|
| You are correct in that many countries DGAF and just
| flare/vent the combined equivalent of multiple Texas's. Iraq,
| for example, flared 16.8 bcm (= 593 billion cubic feet) in
| 2018.
|
| https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/natural-
| gas-p...
| anonporridge wrote:
| Another example from Turkmenistan.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/09/mind-
| boggling-...
|
| > Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to
| 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK's annual emissions,
| which are the 17th-biggest in the world.
|
| Turkmenistan has 1/10th the population of the UK and 1/6th
| the GDP per capita.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > We do not vent unless an emergency situation arises.
|
| I've flown over west TX at night three times since spring and
| there were hundreds of flares blazing. It looks like Kuwait in
| 91.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Flaring != venting. Venting would be releasing unburned
| methane/natural gas directly into the atmosphere.
| ska wrote:
| Is anyone doing LNG in that part of TX ?
| auspiv wrote:
| ~500 miles from the nearest liquification facility? no. they
| need to compete with all the other producers to get gas on a
| pipeline that goes to the Gulf coast to a liquification
| plant.
| specialist wrote:
| How prevalent is flaring/venting?
|
| Anecdata: Right before the apocalypse, I drove from Midlands to
| El Paso at night. There were miles and miles long stretches lit
| up by flaring.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| ## Edit: thanks to the that replies spotted it is per unit of
| production ##
|
| --- Feel free to ignore:
|
| Per state is not a useful measure. At least say how much oil and
| meat is produced in each state for comparison.
|
| Is it a r/peopleliveincities effect? Or is Texas worse at
| polluting with methane?
|
| Also quite interested in the tech that can measure methane from
| satellites.
| auspiv wrote:
| I had to look through the article twice to find it - "per unit
| of production"
| nerdponx wrote:
| Extracting that part here because it's really buried:
|
| > Satellite imaging of methane leaks across the Permian
| basin, a vast geological feature at the heart of the US oil
| and gas drilling industry, show that sites in Texas have
| emitted double the amount of the gas than in New Mexico, per
| unit of production, since 2019.
|
| > Methane is emitted from various activities, such as from
| the raising of livestock, but oil and gas production is the
| biggest source of the pollutant in the US ...
| bluGill wrote:
| That still doesn't tell the full picture. Are the
| quantities of methane the same in both states? I'm sure
| there are lots of other differences.
| cbb330 wrote:
| in addition there is a scaling factor. it's easy to control
| mistakes when you have 1 well. hard to control mistakes when
| you have 10,000,000 wells. thus the regulation has to be
| mapped appropriately.
|
| also, I'd be interested in seeing p90, p99, etc. to see if
| outliers affect the average that is reported -- because as
| texas probably has larger 100x production, average is exposed
| to more large incidents.
|
| i would be MOST interested to compare against other similar
| "sovereign entity" with comparable production scale and
| comparable challenges e.g. geography and infra.
|
| the US has a huge environmental benefit in producing oil vs
| entity's like China, Saudi Arabia, because as a transparent
| democracy we are able to hold our producers accountable to
| regulation where offshore producers have no transparency and
| accountability.
| megaman821 wrote:
| This is definitely in the EPA's purview to regulate and monitor
| better. I don't believe the framing at all that this is industry
| standard venting practices, the excess methane is from leaks. I
| would bet anything that as we get higher resolution satellite
| monitoring, most of the excess methane will come from a few
| "super-leakers" who haven't kept up on their maintenance.
| nerdponx wrote:
| And before anyone gets all upset about the Commerce Clause and
| the boundary of the authority of the EPA: air quality does not
| respect state boundaries, and is therefore a matter of
| interstate commerce.
| specialist wrote:
| As you know, every single progressive effort begets a much
| larger reactionary effort to undo it.
|
| The EPA in particular has been under continuous assault.
| Apparently a liveable planet is fractionally less profitable
| for a handful of incumbents, which is intolerable.
|
| When tortured rationalizations (perverting the commerce
| clause, equal protection, precedent, the actual unambiguous
| language and stated intent of any given law, and simple
| logic) prive insufficient, our reactionary SCOTUS will divine
| nonsensical plot devices like the "major questions doctrine"
| to get their predetermined outcome.
| tigerstyle wrote:
| My hunch would be that abandoned wells are more responsible for
| this issue than better regulated new wells. Old wells are more
| likely to leak, as shown in the link below, are often never
| checked on, and were often drilled and shut-in when there was a
| lot less regulation. They can be venting directly to atmosphere,
| and since natural gas is naturally odorless and wells are often
| in remote locations, the potential for them to leak a lot of gas
| for a long time is high.
|
| Texas has a lot more historical production of oil and gas, which
| should result in a lot more old and abandoned wells. That doesn't
| give them a pass, but if this hypothesis is true, this flaring
| regulation would not have a major impact.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-drilling-abandoned-sp...
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I've wondered how likely you'd be to face legal repercussions
| for going rogue and fixing old leaky wells. The main non-legal
| issue would be expertise and equipment. I'm thinking of
| organizations like wren.co that could do this.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'd be more worried about safety. Cattle can be dangerous
| when they don't know you - most are not, just enough to make
| you forget to be careful. If you damage anything you are in
| trouble for it.
|
| That said, if you can find the land owner most will be
| willing to give you permission and warn you about hazards to
| worry about. Figure out how to do it right and for free -
| with a good insurance that you won't harm their land and you
| will have more work where you can get permission than you
| lifetime will allow you to fix.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I'd think that if you touched old wells without permission or
| government support, you'd end up owning the well caps and
| future emissions, so if your "fixed" well is discovered to be
| leaking next year, the owner is going to say "We capped it
| off properly, those guys must have caused the leak when they
| "fixed" it, now it's their problem".
| auspiv wrote:
| Properly "fixing" leaking wells involves getting a workover
| rig on site and pumping 10-1000 barrels of cement. Not to
| mention developing a plan and submitting it to the state for
| the well work permit, which hopefully comes before the rig
| gets on site. Rigs will not do work without a valid permit. I
| used to be a PM for well abandonment.
|
| Minimum cost would be in the $80k-100k range. Double or
| triple that if you run into any issues. My most expensive
| abandonment was around $400k, which was for a simple,
| vertical 5000ft well.
| xyst wrote:
| Without the raw data from "Kayrros" to compare whether or not
| the methane emissions they found via satellite imagery is from
| active sites or abandoned wells. This is just pure speculation.
|
| The photos depicted in The Guardian article show some site in
| Midland County, TX that appear active to me, but the images do
| not bear any road markings or distinct physical landmarks to
| logically place an address and cross reference with local and
| state data to determine if it's an active site or not.
| googl-free wrote:
| unfortunately this isn't really the case. the industry knows
| its throwing away massive amounts of methane from the active
| fracking based wells. texas railroad commissioner is on the
| record defending it as carbon neutral because if you leak it or
| capture and burn it, it adds the same carbon footprint. methane
| flares are permitted at huge volumes. and if you drive i-10
| between el paso and san antonio, its starkly clear
| snewman wrote:
| And to be clear (for anyone who doesn't know, I presume
| parent does and simply didn't think it necessary to explain),
| this "carbon neutrality" argument is entirely bogus, because
| one molecule of methane has far more climate impact than one
| molecule of carbon dioxide, even though they each contain a
| single carbon atom (CH4 vs. CO2).
|
| Apparently, the underlying science is basically that
| "wigglier" molecules have more propensity to intercept
| photons, and that's why molecules like methane and
| refrigerants have more impact than the relatively simple CO2.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| [delayed]
| mannyv wrote:
| "Better regulated" in this case means "less methane emissions."
|
| There are other definitions of "better regulated" that don't
| include "les emissions."
|
| This is the headline bullshit that the guardian always pulls.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Huh? No it means there are more regulations that seem to strike
| a better trade off than Texas; the article claims that New
| Mexico's rules don't seem to cut down on business growth but do
| result in less methane emissions.
| peyton wrote:
| The article also links to another article that states New
| Mexico hasn't funded additional inspectors needed to enforce
| their rule. A simple analysis would be to tally up granted
| permits in each state and compare with satellite data to
| quantify impact and unlawful emissions. If that was done, the
| data isn't shared in this article. I don't think a press
| release from before a law went into effect is strong enough
| evidence for the conclusions presented here.
| seventytwo wrote:
| Have to associate a cost to this or it's never going to get
| fixed. Every bit of pollution put out into the environment should
| come with a price. You want to emit X tons of pollution? Ok. Pay
| Y dollars to the government.
| civilized wrote:
| Weirdly I'm actually happy to hear about stuff like this. It
| means there are ways we can slow down the pace of global warming
| a bit without having to confront the really hard civilizational
| change issues (which we of course also should, but it's
| daunting).
| digging wrote:
| Is that really true though, or are low-hanging fruit issues
| like this more of a distraction from buckling down for the hard
| work that we're afraid of?
| ewgoforth wrote:
| I'm all for reducing methane emissions, but Texas is slightly
| more than twice the area of New Mexico.
| codingdave wrote:
| > ...sites in Texas have emitted double the amount of the gas
| than in New Mexico, per unit of production, since 2019.
|
| It isn't measuring the whole state, this is comparing per unit.
| cbb330 wrote:
| > double the amount of the gas than in New Mexico, per unit
| of production, since 2019.
|
| when we look at data at scale, we use p99 metrics to get more
| insight into the average. because this article, i'm assuming,
| is just using average, the metric here does not have enough
| information. There could be just one incident in texas over 4
| year period that affects the average per unit of production.
|
| > Despite increasing its own oil production in recent years,
| New Mexico has no site with repeated methane leaks, unlike in
| Texas,
|
| Why not deep dive into root cause of a few of these abusers?
| Blameless post mortem to assess what must be changed with
| very specific examples of issues.
|
| Are we wrong to request a higher bar for journalism /
| research from Kayrros?
| sillywalk wrote:
| I didn't know Texas had regulations.
| cbb330 wrote:
| I know the hackernews crowd is very pro-regulation, so before
| downvoting please consider responding so we can have a discussion
| and share experience together.
|
| "It seems the regulation in New Mexico has had an impact without
| hurting business"
|
| Assuming that oil has some net affect on humanity -- pros and
| cons. Then we need to consider the net affect of oil produced by
| texas on humanity, and consider how that net affect is changed
| with more regulation.
|
| Simply saying "yeah it seems like New Mexico doin real good with
| more laws" is extremely dangerous, because most regulation DOES
| harm and destroy market affects and competitive businesses. The
| authors on the study here should AT LEAST report with due
| diligence on this before requesting for increased regulation and
| attempting to sway public opinion -- potentially having a net
| NEGATIVE affect on humanity.
|
| One possible example of not considering the net negative affect
| of regulation, is, for example, if there are many competing
| energy companies in texas, and there is a consumer demand for
| more responsible operations, then those competing energy
| companies are forcing each other to tighten their operations wrt
| environmental impact. However, if regulation destroys small
| producers and benefits big corporations, then we would see LESS
| competition and LESS Priority from companies to tighten their
| operations, negatively affecting the environment.
| smolder wrote:
| I don't think "hackernews is pro-regulation" is accurate, but
| that might be an easy mistake if you are "anti-regulation". I'm
| neither thing. I like regulation that works well and dislike it
| if it doesn't, which I dare say is the rational POV. I'm going
| to repost my comment from a thread on a recent story flagged as
| dupe:
|
| It's not the amount of regulation that matters, it's the
| intent. Is it written to benefit a greater good, or written to
| benefit a political party's benefactor? The same applies to
| removing regulations. Where did the intent lie? New regulation
| and repeal are most often shades of grey --bad mixed with good
| in terms of overall consequences. Many changes
| disproportionately help a few at some expense to the many.
| That's what happens when minority interests with a lot of money
| are overrepresented in government, lobbyists write bills, etc.
| cbb330 wrote:
| My conclusion on hackernews being "pro-regulation" is based
| on observance that posts discussing the downside of
| regulation are often downvoted.
|
| I agree with what you said. Knowing that repealing regulation
| is much less frequent than producing new regulation -- we
| should assume all new regulation is high risk, since its'
| impact is known to have tradeoffs, is to some degree created
| from perverse incentives and minority interests, and once in
| place is immutable. Regulation can be good and it can be bad.
|
| So if we know that regulation carries high risk, we need to
| be very apprehensive to anyone calling for more regulation
| such as this article via "https://www.kayrros.com/". We don't
| know who they are, what they want, and what their suggested
| change in policy affects in net to humanity over time.
|
| I guess what I want is for companies like
| "https://www.kayrros.com/" to be held to a higher bar and be
| more responsible for the outcome of their research and
| conclusions.
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