#Hidden flowers in windows 7 keygenOther companies also reported methane emissions at levels far lower than what Carbon Mapper’s aircraft observed, even when adjusted to take into account overflights where no emissions were recorded.ĭevon Energy reported releasing methane equivalent to 42,000 metric tons of CO2 for a year of operations in the Permian Basin. In 2020, the most recent year that data is available, the West Texas Gas subsidiary that operates Mako reported that methane emissions from all of its boosting and gathering operations combined were just one-twelfth of what Carbon Mapper documented billowing from the Mako site alone. Over the course of a year, that would be 7.6 times the federal reporting threshold. Only a few dozen sites in the Permian say they exceed that threshold for methane.ĪP’s analysis, however, found that more than 140 of the super-emitting facilities identified by Carbon Mapper were on track to exceed the reporting limit.įor example, Carbon Mapper estimated that Mako emitted an average 870 kilos of methane per hour over each of the four times it was measured. The EPA requires companies to report to its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program emissions above the equivalent of 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Those figures are used by policy makers and scientists to help calculate how much the planet will warm in the coming decades.īut AP found the government database often fails to account for the true rate of emissions observed in the Permian. government keeps an inventory of methane released into the atmosphere. Methane, he added, is “helping drive impacts that communities across the country are already seeing every day, including heat waves and wildfires and sea level rise.” “Reducing air emissions from the oil and natural gas sector is a top priority for the administration and for EPA,” Carbonell said. Tomás Carbonell, EPA’s deputy assistant administrator for stationary sources, told AP that reducing methane emissions is urgent. Proposed rules to address emissions from the hundreds of thousands of existing sites are still under review. On the first day of his administration, President Joe Biden ordered EPA to write new rules to reduce the oil and gas industry’s methane emissions, and Congress reinstated some Obama-era restrictions on methane from new oil and gas facilities. Asked if she believed in climate change, Stansel responded: “I believe in God.” “Can you imagine anyone in here driving an electric car?” asked Brenda Stansel, the owner, who insisted Trump was still the rightful commander in chief. Inside, multiple portraits of John Wayne and a mounted deer wearing a cowboy hat preside over diners eating sauce-slathered beef ribs and krack poppers, a house specialty of cream cheese stuffed peppers wrapped in bacon. It also won him widespread support in the Permian’s Republican-dominated cities and towns, where pumping oil and gas is considered both lifeblood and birthright.Īt Big John’s Feedlot, a burger and barbecue hut in Big Spring, the parking lot one day last fall was filled at lunchtime with gas-guzzling American-made pickup trucks. Trump’s climate denial and die-hard support for fossil fuels attracted campaign contributions from the industry. The Carbon Mapper data and the AP’s camera work show many of the worst emitters are steadily charging the Earth’s atmosphere with this extra gas.īut President Donald Trump, who derided climate change as a Chinese-perpetrated hoax, scrapped those policies before they took effect. An old well may be wafting methane one day, but not the next.īut last October, AP journalists visited more than two dozen sites flagged as persistent methane super emitters by Carbon Mapper with a FLIR infrared camera and recorded video of large plumes of hydrocarbon gas containing methane escaping from pipeline compressors, tank batteries, flare stacks and other production infrastructure. Methane emissions are notoriously hard to track because they are intermittent. PERSISTENT, NOT JUST INTERMITTENT EMISSIONS “If carbon dioxide is the fossil-fuel broiler of our heating planet, methane is a blowtorch.” “Methane is a super pollutant,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. That leaves it up to oil and gas producers - in some cases the very companies who have been fighting regulations - to cut methane emissions on their own. Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency have largely failed to regulate the invisible gas. Methane’s earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger over 20 years than the carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.
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