“Stronger standards would reduce harmful emissions and energy waste from covered sources by 87 percent below 2005 levels while delivering economic benefits”
In a press release the EPA states;
“Oil and natural gas operations are the nation’s largest industrial source of methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, on average, over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere and is responsible for approximately one-third of the warming from greenhouse gases occurring today. Sharp cuts in methane emissions are among the most critical actions the U.S. can take in the short term to slow the rate of climate change.”
There are other sources. Coal mines, trash heaps and of course no one wants to let us forget cows!
If you follow my Regenerative Agriculture, you will be aware of the tremendous possibilities of sequestering carbon through the use of cover crops and other sustainable farming methods. If cows are raised on grass (pasture raised), the grass will store enough carbon to offset the belching of methane. Yet, as of the present, most cows are raised either in feed lots or in buildings.
The Smithsonian Magazine featured a dairy farmer who utilized an “anaerobic digester—basically, a manure-fueled power plant... Pipes move the methane into one of two engines on the farm that burns it to create heat and electricity. This provides all the farm’s heating needs. The organic matter left over after digestion is used as fertilizer on the fields, which has increased crop yields considerably.”
The EPA has an entire article concerning the use of anaerobic digesters for dairy farmers and give the examples of;
“Calgren Dairy Fuels, for instance, collects biogas from 12 dairies in Tulare County, California and upgrades it to pipeline-quality renewable natural gas (RNG), which is injected into a SoCalGas pipeline and transported to existing compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations.” and “Many companies and utilities are willing to pay a premium for renewable energy or carbon offsets to reduce their carbon footprint.” and “food waste or other organics may be codigested with dairy manure to increase biogas production rates, which can increase revenue from energy sales” . This process can be utilized for pork and poultry production as well. As demonstrated, the cost can be net and even produce a profit.
In addition, some land shouldn’t or even can’t be farmed. An example would be mountains where sheep and goats graze land a tractor couldn’t even traverse. In addition, some lands such as vast stretches of Africa don’t receive enough rainfall to raise crops, but will sustain livestock. In some areas the production has been increased through Regenerative Agriculture. And even in the U.S., much of our land is to steep to be used for anything except grassland for grazing.
Those wishing to ban meat need to consider that most of our methane comes from oil and gas wells and coal mines. We need to examine the past, the present and then the future as they are all interconnected. The Guardian made some interesting points;
“More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars...About 40% of human-caused methane emissions come from leaks from fossil fuel exploration, production and transportation.”
Bloomberg did a research piece on old wells and posted the following:
“There are hundreds of thousands of such decrepit oil and gas wells across the U.S., and for a long time few people paid them much mind. That changed over the past decade as scientists discovered the surprisingly large role they play in the climate crisis. Old wells tend to leak, and raw natural gas consists mostly of methane, which has far more planet-warming power than carbon dioxide. That morning in Ohio we pointed our camera at busted pipes, rusted joints, and broken valves, and we saw the otherwise invisible greenhouse gas jetting out.”
This same type of leak comes from old coal mines, in fact, in Australia coal mines are the major source of methane leaks.
In Ohio, a man by the name of Huston owns :
“Over the past four years his Diversified Energy Co. has amassed about 69,000 wells, eclipsing Exxon Mobil Corp. to become the largest well owner in the country. Investors love him. Since listing shares in 2017, Hutson’s company has outperformed almost every other U.S. oil and gas stock, swelling his personal stake to more than $30 million.”
I don’t understand why. Many of the wells produce nothing worth capturing and he has made good on caping old wells. But the Ohio state government has an agreement with him to plug 20 a year. The owner responds with:
On average, he figures his wells have an additional 50 years in them, which means there’s no hurry to start socking away money to plug them. It also means they could be spouting pollution long past 2050, the target date set by President Joe Biden for zeroing out emissions across the economy.
“State regulators say Diversified hasn’t broken any rules by building an empire of dying wells. Nor has it violated any restrictions on methane emissions, because none apply. Indeed, state and federal policies—from plugging regulations to tax subsidies—encourage companies to do exactly what Diversified is doing: Keep almost dead assets on life support as long as possible, no matter how much they may damage the planet.”
Most oil wells are drilled by a major company and when they slow down, then they are sold to smaller companies who drain what they can out of them and then resell the wells, sometimes up to 20 times. In the end, they are owned by small companies who come and go with the times and leave wells unplugged emitting methane. Bloomberg goes on to comment:
“But Diversified’s breakneck growth has alarmed some regulators, landowner groups, and industry insiders, not to mention environmental advocates. State laws require that every well be plugged with cement after it runs dry, an expensive and complicated chore. At the rate Diversified is paying dividends to shareholders, some worry there will be nothing left when the bills come due. If a company can’t meet its plugging obligations, that burden falls to the state, which means Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia could be stuck with a billion-dollar mess. “The model seems like it’s built on abandoning those assets,” says Ted Boettner, who’s studied abandoned wells at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a regional research organization. “It looks like a liability bomb that’s destined to explode.”
The Ohio River Valley Institute on damages from uncapped oil wells:
“After more than a century of oil and gas drilling, unplugged or improperly plugged abandoned oil and gas wells are causing extensive environmental damage and imposing health and safety risks because they are leaching pollutants into the air and water. Some of these abandoned wells are leaking large amounts of harmful methane into the atmosphere, which is a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, as well as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that damage local air quality, and both of which can – under certain circumstances – pose serious public safety concerns. Leaks from abandoned wells, such as oil, brine and drilling byproducts, have also been linked to the contamination of groundwater supplies and soil, which can undermine drinking water, agriculture activity and property values. There have also been a number of dangerous explosions due to leaking gas or methane from wells...How many abandoned oil and gas wells need to be cleaned up? No one knows for sure. The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission’s (IOGCC) periodic survey of idle and orphan wells estimates in 2018 that there were 56,600 documented unplugged orphan wells, and up to 746,000 additional undocumented orphan wells, nationwide. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates there are 2.1 million unplugged onshore abandoned wells. A recent report by Carbon Tracker estimates that there over 2.6 million unplugged onshore wells in the United States that are at risk of being orphaned with a total closure cost between $78 billion and $280 billion.”
In another article by Bloomberg concerning Turkmenistan’s one of the three major polluters :
“If all the gas that’s leaked or vented by Turkmenistan’s energy was salvaged and burned instead and the EU rules take effect, the combined measures would have roughly the same short-term climate effect as wiping out roughly 290 million tons of CO2 each year, according to calculations by Bloomberg and energy think tank Ember.”
This is one of 1000 sites and in the near future, another 500 timebombs will be added to the list. Most of the leaks can be solved with a minor expense. But this requires an initial expense of locating and repairing and then monitoring the existing wells and with easier money to be made with ongoing operations, little is being done to solve the problem. Private industry seems unwilling to do anything on its own, so our President has proposed:
“ the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it is strengthening its proposed standards to cut methane and other harmful air pollution. If finalized, these critical, commonsense standards will protect workers and communities, maintain and create high-quality, union-friendly jobs, and promote U.S. innovation and manufacturing of critical new technologies, all while delivering significant economic benefits through increased recovery of wasted gas.
The updates, which supplement proposed standards EPA released in November 2021, reflect input and feedback from a broad range of stakeholders and nearly half a million public comments. The updates would provide more comprehensive requirements to reduce climate and health-harming air pollution, including from hundreds of thousands of existing oil and gas sources nationwide. It would promote the use of innovative methane detection technologies and other cutting-edge solutions, many of which are being developed and deployed by small businesses providing good-paying jobs across the United States.
The new proposal also includes a ground-breaking “Super-Emitter Response Program” that would require operators to respond to credible third-party reports of high-volume methane leaks. The agency estimates that in 2030, the proposal would reduce methane from covered sources by 87 percent below 2005 levels.
“The United States is once again a global leader in confronting the climate crisis, and we must lead by example when it comes to tackling methane pollution – one of the biggest drivers of climate change. We’re listening to public feedback and strengthening our proposed oil and gas industry standards, which will enable innovative new technology to flourish while protecting people and the planet,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Our stronger standards will work hand in hand with the historic level of resources from the Inflation Reduction Act to protect our most vulnerable communities and to put us on a path to achieve President Biden’s ambitious climate goals...
Taking into account both the supplemental proposal and other measures in the November 2021 proposal, EPA projects that the proposed standards would reduce an estimated 36 million tons of methane emissions from 2023 to 2035, the equivalent of 810 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s nearly the same as all greenhouse gases emitted from coal-fired electricity generation in the U.S. in 2020. EPA’s estimates also show the updated proposal would reduce VOC emissions by 9.7 million tons from 2023 to 2035, and air toxics emissions, including chemicals such as benzene and toluene, by 390,000 tons. These projections reflect new analysis of the costs and benefits of the proposed standards, which incorporates an improved modeling approach as well as updated estimates of the number of facilities covered by the supplemental proposal and the amount of methane and VOCs they emit.”
If we can just keep the “House” from trying to destroy any initiative.