Natural Gas Eradication Is Growing and So Is Injurious Methane Leakage

With current drilling automation, natural gas eradication has explode in past years. In British Columbia, hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. “fracking”) in earlier tough deposits allowed natural gas production to double between 2006 and 2017.
A new study of gas and oil resources of the northeastern part of British Columbia shows that many of the wells there are losing gas through leaks. That gas is mostly made up of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. “It’s a really impressive dataset in terms of the number of samples,” says Amy Townsend-Small, a biogeochemistry at the University of Cincinnati who was not involved in the study.
Operators extract oil and gas through steel-lined wells at mining sites, some reaching depths of over a mile to extract deep shale gas deposits. These wells can flow oil, gas, or fracking fluids (a mix of water, sand, and chemicals) into the atmosphere while they’re active or after they are retired. Since 1995, Canadian officials have required operators of these sites to report leaks they find, and since 2010 those regulations have grown stricter, requiring testing for leaks after the well is drilled and during maintenance.
Of the 21,525 wells, 2,322 had leaked at some point—that’s more than 10 percent. The vast majority of those leaks involved natural gas seeping from the top of the well into the air. A small portion—3.42 percent—were liquid leaks, often a mix of saltwater from deep reservoirs and fracking fluids.
Most of the gas leaks were small, less than a cubic meter of gas a day, but 15 wells leaked up to 300 times that much. Townsend-Small says that matches findings from other studies, in which so-called “super emitters” contributed heavily to the total volume of leaked methane winding up in the atmosphere.
All those gas leaks pack a punch for the climate. Utilizing an normal parole rate, the Chesnaux and his crew predicted that the wells could imply to 75,000 tons of carbon dioxide comparable discharge every year, roughly the same as a Canadian town of 5,000 people. The average leaky well produces the same amount of methane burped up by 24 cows, the study estimates. And methane is about 28 times as effective in warming the climate as carbon dioxide.

By – Abhishek Singh
Content - https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/natural-gas-leaks-methane/