On Tuesday, a pair of studies showed that the amount of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, in the atmosphere has risen to record levels, and that while globally agriculture remains a key source of methane, fossil fuels are to blame for 80% of the increase in methane pollution in North America. Between 2000 and 2017, methane concentrations have risen by 9% globally, as a result of an 11% increase in emissions from agriculture, land use and landfills, and a 15% increase in methane pollution from fossil fuels.
Getting more specific, while methane emitted from coal mining and burning was a major source of emissions at the start of the 21st century, the rise of fracking has more than offset the reductions from reduced coal use. If we want any hope of keeping climate change in check, we will need to eliminate these emissions.
Or will we? The day after these peer-reviewed studies essentially proved that the methane leaks from fracking and natural gas operations are a major source of pollution, the American Petroleum Institute rushed to place a story in the Washington Examiner about the amazing success of their voluntary efforts to reduce emissions.
According to API’s progress self-report, the oil and gas companies involved in the program have conducted thousands of leak surveys on millions of components, and found that there’s less than 1 leak per every 1,000 components, or a 0.08% “leak occurrence rate.”
Which certainly sounds impressive, until you consider, as EDF’s Ben Ratner pointed out, “a small number of very large methane emissions events is a huge part of the overall problem, so just because a company reports a low methane emission frequency does not mean actual levels of methane emissions are low.” (The Exxon Valdez only ran into Alaska once, after all.)
And indeed, though API’s nearly 40-page progress report has a lot of claims about environmental performance improvements, nowhere does it actually show that the voluntary efforts have actually reduced methane emissions. In fact, the only thing that comes close is a graph showing a gradual reduction in “methane intensity,” which, when averaged between 7 basins, is slowly (barely) declining.
But because it shows the amount of methane pollution per million cubic feet of gas produced by region, and because these regions have been increasing how much gas they produce, the pictured decline actually obscures a damning admission: the real-world increase in methane pollution in the past 20 years.
And then there’s the fact that the industry considers flaring methane to be a reasonable alternative to just venting it, because burning methane before letting it loose in the atmosphere converts it into carbon dioxide, so it's fine.
Of course that hardly makes it safe, especially according to E&E’s coverage of a new study on the effects on pregnancy of flaring in the Eagle Ford basin (which, coincidentally, has by far the lowest methane intensity levels of the 7 regions API averages in its graph).
By examining the birth records of over 20,000 women, the researchers found that pregnant women who live within 3 miles of fracking sites that regularly burn off methane have a 50% greater risk of premature birth, and women who lived near wells had babies with below-average birth weights.
Hispanic women made up 55% of the sample, and their risk was even greater than the white women who were 37% of the sample. “The fact that much of the region is low income,” co-author Jill Johnston said in a press release, “and that approximately 50% of residents living within three miles of an oil or gas well are people of color, raises environmental justice concerns about the oil and gas boom in south Texas.” The answer is obvious: “measures to minimize flaring — such as more stringent regulation of flaring or investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures that reduce reliance on fossil fuels overall — would protect the health of infants.”
So while API’s progress report notes that it held a workshop on how companies “can reduce flaring volumes and improve flare reliability and efficiency,” it also called it “the safer environmental option” relative to venting off the methane, despite the benzene and other toxins in the resulting smoke.
When your safer option is not only still very polluting, but also hurting pregnant women and their premature babies, maybe it’s time to admit that voluntary measures aren’t going to cut it.
Then again, there aren’t a lot of women or babies in fossil fuel board rooms so we don’t expect any big changes any time soon.