
Evan Sherwin
240 posts

Evan Sherwin
@EvanDSherwin
Energy & climate researcher focusing on methane emissions, carbon dioxide removal. Research Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Opinions are my own.



New study led by @evandsherwin in @NatureEnergyJnl compiles data from nearly one million aerial measurements of methane leaks across major US oil & gas basins, finds leakage ranges from 0.75% in the Marcellus to 9.6% in the Permian. The six-region weighted average is 2.95%, ~3x the rate in EPA's national GHG inventory nature.com/articles/s4158…



Is part of the reason methane leaks are so high in the Permian that the basin has faced gas pipeline constraints to date? It's an oil focused play and they're already shoving as much associated gas into pipelines as they can, so dont care much about reducing leaks beyond that?

The methods and nuance employed in the NPC study on natural gas system methane emissions should be applied here. NPC addresses issues like top down (which this study is) versus bottom up. And it has describes various sophisticated methods for incorporating these data into broader lifecycle emissions analysis. chartingthecourse.npc.org/downloads.php My view is this basin average oil and gas methane emissions rate of 2.95% is a not a reasonable number to use for natural gas system emissions intensities. But the underlying data could be used to arrive at better lifecycle analysis values for natural gas system methane intensities.

