Declining methane emissions and steady, high leakage rates observed over multiple years in a western US oil/gas production basin

Lin, John C.; Bares, Ryan; Fasoli, Benjamin; Garcia, Maria; Crosman, Erik T.; Lyman, Seth

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-01721-5

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The resulting trend for the Uintah Basin CH 4 enhancement for 2014-2020 is plotted in Figure 12. Lin et al (2021) show that basin natural gas production increased rapidly, peaking in 2012 and 2013, and then declined rapidly.…”

Section: Validation Of the Airs Ch 4 Enhancement Derivation Using Dat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Reddy

Taylor

2022

Earth and Space Science

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The oil and gas (O&G) sector is estimated to be the largest contributor to anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions in Colorado. Since 2004, the State of Colorado has implemented multiple regulations to significantly reduce emissions from the O&G sector. The Denver‐Julesburg Basin (DJ Basin) is a significant O&G producing region in northern Colorado, and O&G production here has steadily increased over the last decade. To assess CH4 trends in Northern Colorado, we selected CH4 retrievals from the NASA Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument for 2003–2020. The study grid cell includes Denver, Boulder, and much of the dense O&G production in the DJ Basin. We computed mean June‐August ascending node AIRS 700 hPa CH4 for each year and subtracted mean June–August CH4 sampled at NOAA's Niwot Ridge (NWR) station, a high‐altitude background site. Differences represent estimated enhancement over background. Linear regression shows an annual change of −2.84 ppb ± 0.8 ppb from 2012 to 2020 (R2 0.90) and an estimated reduction of 56% for 2012–2020, despite substantial increases in O&G production. Local CH4 enhancement is strongly correlated with surface measurements of ethane at Platteville which is in the center of the O&G fields (correlation coefficient 0.96), and this is evidence that reductions in O&G emissions are driving reductions in CH4. We conclude that AIRS CH4 can be used to measure the efficacy of emissions control programs in this region and that regulatory requirements are having an effect.

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Section: Validation Of the Airs Ch 4 Enhancement Derivation Using Dat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Reddy

Taylor

2022

Earth and Space Science

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“…In the contiguous United States, NO x emissions from oil and gas production contribute about 5% to the total NO x emissions, but regionally, these emissions can be a significantly larger source that affects local air quality. While methane emissions from oil and gas fields have received much recent attention, − NO x and VOC emissions are more poorly described. For example, a modeling study showed that NO x emissions were overestimated by a factor of about 4, while VOC emissions were underestimated by a factor of about 2, in the regulatory emission inventory for the Uintah basin in Utah .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying NO_x Emissions from U.S. Oil and Gas Production Regions Using TROPOMI NO₂

Dix

Francoeur

et al. 2022

ACS Earth Space Chem.

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The production of crude oil and natural gas is associated with emissions of air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides (NO x = NO + NO 2 ) and volatile organic compounds, which are precursors for the formation of ground-level ozone. Knowledge of these emissions is critical to the understanding and mitigation of local air quality. NO x emissions from oil and gas production activities are not well described in commonly used emission inventories, and discrepancies of several factors have been found in the past. Here we present an easy and computationally efficient method to quantify NO x emissions from satellite NO 2 observations that can be applied to evaluate common emission inventories and provide timely input for chemistry transport models. Using NO 2 columns from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), we calculated annually averaged NO x emissions from the divergence of NO 2 column fluxes for six oil and gas production regions in the United States. Derived NO x emissions for the years 2018 to 2020 range between 4.8 and 81.1 t/day, and observed trends over time are consistent with changes in industrial activity. To evaluate the method, we compared our results with the fuel-based oil and gas NO x inventory (FOG) and performed sensitivity studies using model output from the Weather Research Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). We found that annually averaged NO x emissions from oil and gas production activities can in most cases be calculated within an uncertainty of 50%, while simultaneously derived emission maps show the spatial distribution of NO x emissions with a high level of detail. For future use, this method can easily be applied globally.

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“…This is difficult because emissions from oil and gas production typically involve thousands of individual point sources, some of which may be individually large (Irakulis-Loixate et al, 2021) and others individually small but accumulating to large regional totals (Omara et al, 2022). Complicating matters is the strong and poorly understood temporal variability of emissions, both in terms of the intermittency of individual point sources (Cusworth et al, 2021a) and regional fluctuations across oil and gas production basins (Lin et al, 2021;Cusworth et al, 2022). Observations of atmospheric methane have been used extensively for top-down estimates of methane emissions through inversion of atmospheric transport models relating emissions to concentrations (Houweling et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Continuous weekly monitoring of methane emissions from the Permian Basin by inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations

Varon

Jacob

Hmiel

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. We quantify weekly methane emissions at 0.25°×0.3125° (≈25×25 km2) resolution from the Permian Basin, the largest oil production basin in the United States, by inverse analysis of satellite observations from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) from May 2018 to October 2020. The mean oil and gas emission from the region (± standard deviation of weekly estimates) was 3.7 ± 0.9 Tg a-1, higher than previous TROPOMI inversion estimates that may have used too-low prior emissions or biased background assumptions. We find strong week-to-week variability in emissions superimposed on longer-term trends, and these are consistent with independent inferences of temporal emission variability from tower, aircraft, and multispectral satellite data. New well development and local natural gas spot price were significant drivers of variability in emissions over our study period, but the concurrent 50 % increase in oil and gas production was not. The methane intensity (methane emitted per unit of methane gas produced) averaged 4.6 % ± 1.3 % and steadily decreased over the period from 5–6 % in 2018 to 3–4 % in 2020. While the decreasing trend suggests improvement in operator practices during the study period, methane emissions from the Permian Basin remained high, with methane intensity an order of magnitude above recent industry targets of <0.2 %. Our success in using TROPOMI satellite observations for weekly estimates of emissions from a major oil production basin shows promise for application to near-real-time monitoring in support of climate change mitigation efforts.

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Declining methane emissions and steady, high leakage rates observed over multiple years in a western US oil/gas production basin

Cited by 19 publications

References 67 publications

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Quantifying NO_x Emissions from U.S. Oil and Gas Production Regions Using TROPOMI NO₂

Continuous weekly monitoring of methane emissions from the Permian Basin by inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations

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Declining methane emissions and steady, high leakage rates observed over multiple years in a western US oil/gas production basin

Cited by 19 publications

References 67 publications

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Downward Trend in Methane Detected in a Northern Colorado Oil and Gas Production Region Using AIRS Satellite Data

Quantifying NOx Emissions from U.S. Oil and Gas Production Regions Using TROPOMI NO2

Continuous weekly monitoring of methane emissions from the Permian Basin by inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations

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Quantifying NO_x Emissions from U.S. Oil and Gas Production Regions Using TROPOMI NO₂