Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico are releasing far more climate-changing methane than official estimates show, according to a new study published Monday.
Relying in part on data collected from aircraft, climate scientists found the additional methane coming from oil and gas platforms in the Gulf raises their carbon intensity—the amount of climate-changing gas or equivalent per unit of energy in the fuel—to twice as much as estimated by U.S. agencies like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, The Associated Press reports. The study is published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Reductions in both methane and carbon dioxide emissions are essential to lessen the future severity of climate change, the study notes.
“You don’t have to travel halfway around the world to find unusually high emissions in oil and gas fields,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved in the study. “It’s happening right here in our backyards.”
Other climate scientists who were not involved in the study praised it for its approach.
“This study represents a novel and thoughtful assessment of the climate impact of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona who leads Carbon Mapper, a group pioneering accessible and transparent information about where greenhouse gases are being released. “In particular, the authors have demonstrated the importance of jointly quantifying methane emissions from leakage and venting and carbon dioxide emissions from combustion.”
Study co-author Eric A. Kort, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, said the majority of the methane emissions researchers found were wafting from oil and gas operations in shallow waters, where the oldest oil platforms are. The problem was most acute where energy companies are mostly going after oil and aren’t that interested in the methane gas that lies underground with it, so simply release it into the air.
“It was easier to build platforms in shallow water and drill in shallow waters. Now there’s opportunity to extend out into quite deep waters,” Kort said.
But methane has about 84 times as much climate impact as carbon dioxide over a 20-year span, and is responsible for a significant amount of the climate change we are already experiencing.
The oil platforms out in deeper water emitted much less methane per unit of energy.
The findings could have implications for future offshore oil and gas operations as the U.S. government prepares to lease more areas in the Gulf for drilling. A provision in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act mandates the federal government to offer extensive new offshore leases in federal water for oil and gas drilling if it wants to lease for offshore solar and wind energy.
Kort said the findings can help policy-makers and federal or state agencies compare the climate impact of shallow versus deepwater drilling, to guide where they offer leases.
“It’s very clear from our results that expanding production in shallow waters, the way it’s been done historically, would have disproportionately high climate impacts,” he said.
Study co-author Alan M. Gorchov Negron, another climate scientist at the University of Michigan, said there are 10 more lease sales scheduled for waters in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years.
“This question of the climate impact of future production will return,” he said. “So it’s still relevant to future lease sale climate impact statements.”
This Associated Press story was first republished by The Canadian Press on April 3, 2023.
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