Natural gas flaring, respiratory health, and distributional effects

Blundell, Wesley; Kokoza, Anatolii

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104601

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Therefore, understanding the health impacts of air pollution from O&G production is important from a climate 'co-benefits' perspective, a public health perspective, and an environmental justice perspective [26][27][28][29][30]. Observational studies indicate that populations living in proximity to or downwind of oil and gas activity have higher rates of poor birth outcomes [31], asthma exacerbations [32], emergency room visits [33], hospitalizations [34], cardiovascular disease [35] and other adverse health outcomes [36]. Air pollution from oil and gas activity is often hypothesized to be one of the causative agents contributing to these adverse health effects, but there is limited knowledge on the direct burden of disease attributed to regional oil and gas air pollution, which has implications for oil and gas policy and air quality management.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air pollution and health impacts of oil & gas production in the United States

Buonocore

Reka

Yang

et al. 2023

Environ. Res.: Health

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Oil and gas production is one of the largest emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and a significant contributor of air pollution emissions. While research on methane emissions from oil and gas production has grown rapidly, there is comparatively limited information on the distribution of impacts of this sector on air quality and associated health impacts. Understanding the contribution of air quality and health impacts of oil and gas can be useful for designing mitigation strategies. Here we assess air quality and human health impacts associated with ozone, fine particulate matter, and nitrogen dioxide from the oil and gas sector in the US in 2016, and compare this impact with that of the associated methane emissions. We find that air pollution in 2016 from the oil and gas sector in the US resulted in 410 000 asthma exacerbations, 2200 new cases of childhood asthma and 7500 excess deaths, with $77 billion in total health impacts. NO2 was the highest contributor to health impacts (37%) followed by ozone (35%), and then PM2.5 (28%). When monetized, these air quality health impacts of oil and gas production exceeded estimated climate impact costs from methane leakage by a factor of 3. These impacts add to the total life cycle impacts of oil and gas, and represent potential additional health benefits of strategies that reduce consumption of oil and gas. Policies to reduce oil and gas production emissions will lead to additional and significant health benefits from co-pollutant reductions that are not currently quantified or monetized.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air pollution and health impacts of oil & gas production in the United States

Buonocore

Reka

Yang

et al. 2023

Environ. Res.: Health

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“…Natural gas flaring in oil and gas production, gathering, and processing has emerged in recent years as a crucial waste management issue with significant greenhouse gas, air quality, public health, and environmental justice implications (Zhang et al 2019, Zhizhin et al 2021, Plant et al 2022, Blundell and Kokoza, 2022…”

Section: Tracking Temporal Changes In Regional Oil and Gas Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing a spatially explicit global oil and gas infrastructure database for characterizing methane emission sources at high resolution

Omara

Gautam

O'Brien³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Reducing oil and gas methane emissions is crucially important for limiting the rate of human-induced climate warming. As the capacity of multi-scale measurements of global oil and gas methane emissions have advanced in recent years, including the emerging ecosystem of satellite and airborne remote sensing platforms, a clear need for an openly accessible and regularly updated global inventory of oil and gas infrastructure has emerged as an important tool for characterizing and tracking methane emission sources. In this study, we develop a spatially explicit database of global oil and gas infrastructure, focusing on the acquisition, curation, and integration of public-domain geospatial datasets reported by official government sources, industry, academic, and other non-government entities. We focus on the major oil and gas facility types that are key sources of measured methane emissions, including production wells, offshore production platforms, natural gas compressor stations, processing facilities, liquefied natural gas facilities, crude oil refineries, and pipelines. The first version of this global geospatial database (Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping database, OGIM_v1) contains a total of six million features, including 2.6 million point locations of major oil and gas facility types and over 2.6 million kilometers of pipelines globally. For each facility record, we include key attributes—such as facility type, operational status, oil and gas production and capacity information, operator names, and installation dates—which enable detailed methane source assessment and attribution analytics. Using the OGIM database, we demonstrate facility-level source attribution for multiple airborne remote sensing detected methane point sources from the Permian Basin, which is the largest oil producing basin in the U.S. In addition to source attribution, we present other major applications of this oil and gas infrastructure database in relation to methane emission assessment, including the development of an improved bottom-up methane emission inventory at high resolution (1 km x 1 km). We also discuss the tracking of changes in basin-level oil and gas activity, and the development of policy-relevant analytics and insights for targeted methane mitigation. This work and the OGIM database, which we anticipate updating on a regular cadence, helps fill a crucial oil and gas geospatial data need, in support of the assessment, attribution, and mitigation of global oil and gas methane emissions at high resolution. OGIM_v1 is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7466758 (Omara et al. 2022).

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“…In the U.S., studies have investigated NOx from the oil and gas sector, deploying bottom-up accounting methods as well as airborne, ground, and satellite measurements and found regionally elevated NOx attributable to oil and gas (O&G) activities. − Dix et al estimated that 7% and 11% of NOx emissions in the Permian and Bakken were from flaring in 2015; however, the relative role was found to change depending on the stage of operation (i.e., drilling versus production) . While flaring is not the only source of NOx in O&G regions, recent works aim to investigate the direct impact of flaring on local air quality and human health. − On larger scales, temporal trends in flaring have been explored using various space-based data products. Gas volumes from flares observable from space are estimated across the globe using measurements from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument. , Using nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) as a proxy for NOx, flaring trends have also been investigated using satellite retrievals in regions such as the Artic, Mexico, and Russia .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Situ Sampling of NOx Emissions from United States Natural Gas Flares Reveals Heavy-Tail Emission Characteristic

Plant,

Kort,

Gorchov Negron

et al. 2024

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Natural gas flaring is a common practice employed in many United States (U.S.) oil and gas regions to dispose of gas associated with oil production. Combustion of predominantly hydrocarbon gas results in the production of nitrogen oxides (NOx). Here, we present a large field data set of in situ sampling of real world flares, quantifying flaring NOx production in major U.S. oil production regions: the Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian. We find that a single emission factor does not capture the range of the observed NOx emission factors within these regions. For all three regions, the median emission factors fall within the range of four emission factors used by the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. In the Bakken and Permian, the distribution of emission factors exhibits a heavy tail such that basin-average emission factors are 2−3 times larger than the value employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Extrapolation to basin scale emissions using auxiliary satellite assessments of flare volumes indicates that NOx emissions from flares are skewed, with 20%−30% of the flares responsible for 80% of basin-wide flaring NOx emissions. Efforts to reduce flaring volume through alternative gas capture methods would have a larger impact on the NOx oil and gas budget than current inventories indicate.

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Natural gas flaring, respiratory health, and distributional effects

Cited by 22 publications

References 50 publications

Air pollution and health impacts of oil & gas production in the United States

Air pollution and health impacts of oil & gas production in the United States

Developing a spatially explicit global oil and gas infrastructure database for characterizing methane emission sources at high resolution

In Situ Sampling of NOx Emissions from United States Natural Gas Flares Reveals Heavy-Tail Emission Characteristic

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