We’ve previously pointed out the American Petroleum Institute’s misleading claims that the oil and gas industry has reduced methane emissions by 50% since 1990. What that figure conceals is that methane emissions have actually increased by 40% since 2006, which coincidentally happens to be around the time that fracking really took off. While the literature is still figuring out all the factors at play, we know that methane emissions are rising. What’s more, a recent study also found that fracking in North America is a key driver of that growth. While global methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are relatively steady, the rise in North American gas drilling (fracking in particular) is offsetting the decrease in Russian and African oil drilling emissions.
Enter the EPA, which released its 2020 Greenhouse Gas Inventory last week. According to the oil industry’s Energy in Depth blog, the data shows that methane emissions “continue to decline” with a 25 percent reduction from previous years and a lower leakage rate. Wow, sounds like the industry is really cleaning up its act, so there’s no need to impose any regulations on methane! What a relief that the industry’s voluntary efforts are paying off!
Except, of course, the situation is a little more complicated. Stephen Lee at BloombergLaw reported the EPA’s latest accounting changes have created a massive loophole that may well be responsible for the claimed decrease in emissions. By choosing to estimate emissions by looking at average rates of leakage for each piece of equipment instead of measuring the entire site, this new accounting assumes everything is going fine and that the hard-to-reach pieces just aren’t leaking. However, because the bulk of emissions come from a leak where something has broken, this leaves a massive gap in the accounting. To illustrate, under the old method, 2.2 million tons of methane leaked from gathering stations in 2017. Suddenly, that number’s dropped to just 1.3 million, despite the lack of any sort of regulatory or process changes at these facilities that would lead to such a dramatic decrease.
Did the industry lean on its friends at the EPA to make this change? There’s no telling, but we know that methane levels are rising, in large part because of fracking in the US, and more fracking means more emissions and more leaks… and yet the EPA and Natural Gas industry want us to believe methane leaks are decreasing. Naturally, gaslighting about natural gas.