
Fracking boom tied to methane spike in Earth’s atmosphere - erentz
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/fracking-boom-tied-to-methane-spike-in-earths-atmosphere/
======
tito
Emissions monitoring is a really interesting technology challenge. So much of
it is self-reported, which means a crapshoot. Remote monitoring seems more
reliable but less accurate perhaps. The highest resolution monitoring tech I
know of is NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory2.

Has anyone here studied the Orbiting Carbon Observatory? I'm curious for more
details and how it might help here.

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco2/index.html](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco2/index.html)

~~~
adammunich
I've been working on a project lately to explore geenhouse gas cameras.
[https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-build-a-co2-video-
camera](https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-build-a-co2-video-camera)

I have hope that the thermopile array tech we've been seeing lately might make
gas monitoring more readily available. It likely will still require cryo-
cooling though.

~~~
Nouser76
Really interesting idea! I'm not very knowledgeable around greenhouse gases,
and even less around the various industrial processes that release them. Would
cameras like this be able to give us the amount of CO2 released in say, metric
tons? Or would it be too hard to actually get precise measurements and this is
better for comparing orders of magnitude?

------
yyyk
From the article:

"Ingraffea’s own research has found that a small percentage of wells are
responsible for the bulk of methane emissions either through leaks or
deliberate venting."

Sounds like something that can be solved quickly, and without even bothering
to debate fracking - hardly anyone could oppose regulating the wells involved.

~~~
abernard1
"hardly anyone could oppose regulating the wells involved."

This issue has been going on for a long time, even without fracking.

The issue always is access to natural gas pipelines. The natural gas comes up
with oil production no matter what. Absent access to a pipeline, the well is
"flared" and the natural gas is burned off.

This has been happening in Nigeria and other countries internationally for
decades to due to gas rights disputes.

The question people should ask themselves is why oil & gas companies would
voluntarily leave money on the table, and the answer is "they wouldn't."
However, if you look at New York right now, and natural gas policy over the
last 10 years, it has been actively hostile to building the pipelines that
would prevent this resource from being wasted. The reality is the people
"opposed" to fixing this problem are the people who force the oil production
to happen without allowing the resource to be consumed.

~~~
sitkack
If they can't store it, they shouldn't be allowed to vent or flare it, plain
and simple.

~~~
abernard1
You are effectively saying oil drilling should be banned in America.

Gas is a natural byproduct of drilling, and currently it is the U.S.
government preventing this byproduct from being used and exported due to
pipeline bans. Gazprom--the Russian gas giant--has no such desire to set
perfectly good resources on fire (literally), and has captured the European
market because of it.

Edit: for those who have not quite made this connection yet, the "natural" in
"natural gas" is because there's nothing you can actually do to prevent the
gaseous mixture from escaping from the ground (due to depressurization) with
liquefied oil drilling. It is just "naturally" there. If it can't be contained
under pressure in a pipeline, it either has to be released or set on fire.

------
anon1m0us
> Fracking and the deep-well injection of its waste waters have been widely
> linked to earthquakes.

Yep. Oklahoma now has more earthquakes than California.

[https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402413137/oklahoma-now-has-
mo...](https://www.npr.org/2015/04/26/402413137/oklahoma-now-has-more-
earthquakes-than-california)

Why do we still allow fracking?

~~~
rayiner
> Why do we still allow fracking?

It allows extraction of natural gas, which will have to be part of our energy
mix for the foreseeable future. Natural gas plants not only emit less CO2 than
the coal plants they replace, but can serve as peaker plants to back up
renewables. We’re a long ways away from battery technology being able to serve
that function. (The US is also not independent in terms of critical minerals
needed for battery technology.)

Fracking also allows the US to be energy independent, and reduce its dependent
on unstable middle eastern regimes. Thanks to fracking, the US has the most
flexibility in its Middle East policy it has had in half a century.

~~~
SilasX
>It allows extraction of natural gas, which will have to be part of our energy
mix for the foreseeable future. Natural gas plants not only emit less CO2 than
the coal plants they replace, but can serve as peaker plants to back up
renewables.

Yes, but you kinda defeat the environmental/GHG purpose when you leak out
(unburned) methane, which is an even worse GHG than CO2.

Methane isn’t good for reducing GHG emissions when the act of extracting it
releases something much worse!

(Though of course an exact CBA depends on tabulating the relative amount of
methane released per usable unit extracted, and its relative effectiveness as
GHG ... to say nothing of the other harms of fracking.)

~~~
ThomPete
Methane is logarithmic though.

[https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-
irrelevan...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/11/methane-the-irrelevant-
greenhouse-gas/)

~~~
SilasX
And? The damage from CO2 is logarithmic as well, and methane is currently at a
much lower concentration and the atmosphere, meaning that any given mass is
much more dangerous than CO2, even after adjusting for relative absorption.

~~~
ThomPete
You just answered your own question.

------
ars
Fracking also significantly reduced coal and oil usage in the US (and probably
elsewhere).

This had dramatic effects on air quality, and some good effects on CO2
emission.

The article also mentions that most methane leaks are from a small number of
operations. So my takeaway is that rather than discourage fracking, encourage
it, and also require those operations to fix their equipment.

Then you get the best of both worlds.

(And before you say: No burning any fuels at all, only renawables, remember
that the perfect is the enemy of the good. It's still valuable to make things
better even if you can't make them perfect.)

~~~
alexrtan
Also in an ideal scenario where countries move aggressively to renewables we
need energy sources to put that infrastructure into place and as you say
natural gas is a key part of keeping emissions low. That's why it's not good
that candidates are arguing for straight out bans.

------
tito
Here's the publication referenced in the article:
[https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/bg-16-3033-2019....](https://www.biogeosciences.net/16/3033/2019/bg-16-3033-2019.pdf)

Ideas and perspectives: is shale gas a major driver of recent increase in
global atmospheric methane? Robert Howarth, Ph.D

------
warrenmiller
They've stopped fracking in one of the UK sites now

[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cuadrilla-packs-up-in-
pre...](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cuadrilla-packs-up-in-preston-and-
uk-fracking-bites-dust-82gl7tt9k)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Awesome. That's the only UK site isn't it? I didn't think go-ahead had
actually gone through for any of the others. Mainly because even Tory party
members seemed to be firmly against it.

------
colordrops
Culver City in L.A. has one of the largest, if not largest, urban fracking
operations in the US. We were getting earthquakes with the epicenter right at
the operation, and immediately all the local forums, such as Nextdoor, had
long posts insulting and labeling anyone insinuating that the earthquakes were
caused by fracking. It was very fishy.

~~~
rolltiide
The best thing about conspiracy theories is that they’re good instruction
manuals for readers whether the first one can ever be proved or not.

Life imitates art.

------
sword_smith
How is methane removed from the atmosphere and does a methane sink play a role
in biology like CO2 does through photosynthesis?

~~~
arrosenberg
It decomposes to CO2 and water vapor over about 10 years. The more methane we
pump out, the longer decomp takes because there are fewer atmospheric hydroxyl
radicals to drive the reaction.

The methane cycle I'm familiar with is related to things dying and getting
buried underground or in the ocean. I don't think there is any comparable
process to how photosynthesis consumes CO2. There are methanogen bacteria who
consume it, but that's probably not a globally scalable solution. I think it
would be cheaper just to capture and store it.

~~~
sitkack
Interesting,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092575351...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092575351100186X)

I wonder what the feasibility is in seeding the troposphere with hydroxyl
radicals to accelerate the breakdown of methane?

~~~
marcosdumay
Water (the stable form of hydroxyl + hydrogen, we can't disperse radicals at
the atmosphere) is a powerful greenhouse gas and will offset a lot of the
cooling you may get by it.

------
emmelaich
Methane is not directly related to fracking or not, it's related to any
oil/gas operations.

> Methane emissions occur in all sectors of the natural gas industry, from
> production, through processing and transmission, to distribution. They
> primarily result from normal operations, routine maintenance, fugitive
> leaks, and system upsets.

[https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/primary-
sources...](https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/primary-sources-
methane-emissions)

------
etxm
Something I’m very curious about...

Given* that our actions are causing climate change, what is the logic of oil
companies continuing to do damage?

1\. execs truly dont believe their Corp’s actions impact climate

2\. theyre making piles of cash, they can buy theirselves and their
descendants out of future problems

The first seems naive, the second seems pretty bleak.

What other logic is there for this behavior?

* let’s assume it is for the question above

~~~
im_down_w_otp
3\. Humans are notoriously terrible at internalizing future risk for
consideration in context of the liability of their current actions.

i.e. "I never thought it would happen to me."

~~~
etxm
Doesn’t that acknowledge that they know it’ll happen eventually, even if it’s
a few generations from now?

Your username is fantastic by the way.

------
29athrowaway
What about reservoirs, dams and arctic permafrost?

Vegetation and other organic matter in flooded areas decomposes and releases
methane, large amounts of it.

Arctic permafrost contains a large amounts of methane as well, like the East
Siberian Arctic Shelf.

~~~
tasty_freeze
The article addresses that. Recent (biologically) produced methane has a
different carbon isotope ratio than the ancient gas released from shale
deposits.

~~~
29athrowaway
Methane in arctic permafrost doesn't fall into the "recent" category. It has
been there for many geological eras.

~~~
tito
Agreed! I wrote the author of the paper to get his input. If you want a copy
of his response when I get it, shoot me an email tito@impossiblelabs.io (tho
you may be attempting anonymity here...I can post his response to this thread
in a few days if of interest.

------
_edo
> Fracking involves drilling an oil or gas well vertically and then
> horizontally into a shale formation.

No, that's a horizontal well. Vertical wells get fracked all the time. Non-
shale wells get fracked all the time. Fracking is any time you intentionally
fracture rock formations with pressurized fluids.

> ...studies that show fracking operations leak, vent, or flare between 2 and
> 6 percent of the gas produced, Howarth said.

That's not fracking. That's leaking, venting and flaring. Those things may
happen on wells that have been fracked but that doesn't mean they're caused by
fracking.

If you're opposed to methane entering the atmosphere trying to stop the
breaking of rocks a mile beneath the earth's surface is a bizarre way to solve
that problem. At that point you're not trying to stop leaking, you're trying
to stop production and for some reason are trying to do it under the guise of
stopping fracking.

~~~
ip26
Stopping fracking would definitely stop leaks in the process.

If the frackers are totally unwilling to tolerate & abide by regulation, then
people will feel like "it can't be fixed, just shut it all down".

~~~
_edo
Stop leaks in what process? Fracking or oil and natural gas production?

Do you have some evidence that more methane is being released into the
atmosphere during the weeks of fracking than during the years of production?

