Recent technological advances have led to large and rapid increases in oil and natural gas extraction in the United States. The increasing abundance of lower cost natural gas has the potential to displace less efficient fossil sources, and has been considered a potentially important ‘bridge’ fuel to more sustainable energy sources. However, the climate value of natural gas requires low leakage rates prior to combustion, as atmospheric methane acts as a potent greenhouse gas. Recently, the leakage rates associated with the new boom in natural gas harvesting with high-volume hydraulic fracturing has come into question, impacting the climate-value of natural gas. To make informed societal decisions we need quantitative information on methane emissions. In this talk I will discuss different observational techniques in which atmospheric observations are used to locate, quantify, and attribute fugitive methane emissions. I will discuss the first example of identifying and quantifying anomalous methane emissions from a region of energy production using space-based observations. I will also present new airborne observations of ethane and methane over multiple oil and gas fields in Texas and North Dakota, and demonstrate how these observations can be used to both quantify ethane emissions and partition methane emissions to specific source sectors. We will consider current technological capabilities and limitations, and the need for quantitative assessment of methane emissions from other fossil-fuel harvesting activities beyond high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

Locating, quantifying, and attributing methane emissions from fossil-fuel extraction

249th National Meeting (2015)

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