Plugging the methane leaks
“A small leak will sink a great ship” was a favourite saying of Benjamin Franklin, the writer, scientist, diplomat and Founder Father of the US. It could also be a pretty good slogan for the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change. Methane emissions from leaks, venting and other sources have increasingly come into focus in policy discussions and among businesses as an important contributor to global warming.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th Assessment Report, published in August, highlighted methane as the second most significant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. Methane emissions alone are estimated to have caused about 0.5 °C of global warming since the 19th century, about two-thirds as much as carbon dioxide.
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The growth in global methane emissions since 2007 has been largely driven by the fossil fuel industries and agriculture, the IPCC scientists concluded. Roughly 30% of human-created methane emissions come from the fossil fuel industries, with agriculture, waste and biomass accounting for the rest. Within that fossil fuel section, the coal industry is responsible for about one-third, and the oil and gas industry two-thirds.
So although oil and gas production, processing and transport only accounts for a minority of human-created methane emissions, it is still a significant contributor. And whereas solutions in agriculture can be elusive — adding seaweed to cows’ diet to reduce their burps and farts is still being tested — the strategies and techniques for capturing methane and preventing leaks in the oil and gas business are well-established. The UN Environment Programme argued in its new Emissions Gap Report 2021, published this week, that using existing technologies to capture methane leaking from oil, gas and coal facilities could reduce the sector’s emissions by 40-50% by 2030, “much of it at net-zero cost”.
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