This summer, methane got a nickname that stuck. Climate scientists and policy analysts have been calling the greenhouse gas a “low-hanging fruit” for years, but the term seems to have caught on more broadly among world leaders, journalists and organizers, due in part to a major United Nations report on methane and the most dire Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment issued yet.

Methane is the second greatest contributor to the climate emergency after carbon dioxide, but unlike CO2, it only sticks around the atmosphere for about a decade. So cutting methane emissions drastically and immediately can have a sizable impact on keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and thereby averting the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, such as global food shortage.

In total, the oil and gas industry is responsible for over one-third of methane emissions, some of which occur through flaring and venting: the practice of burning off, or releasing unwanted methane gas in the process of drilling, pumping, transporting and refining fossil fuels.

An August 19 report by Earthworks reveals that among the lowest of low-hanging fruits may be found in the Permian Basin, in West Texas, where up to 84 percent of producers are flaring without permits. Since fracking was commercialized a decade ago, the Permian Basin has exploded as the top oil-producing region in the U.S.

The report outlines how state regulators charged with keeping tabs on flaring, including the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC), which issues flaring permits, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which oversees air quality, are doing nothing to stop producers observed to be dumping gas into the atmosphere. In other words, the Permian Basin is even more of a climate bomb — and a potential site of climate intervention — than environmentalists may have originally thought.

Texas is the top flarer of all U.S. states, according to federal data from 2019. But the practice is a problem far beyond the Lone Star State. A July study in Environmental Research Letters found that across the U.S., over half a million people live within three miles of a flare. Living near a flare is associated with 50 percent higher odds of premature birth. In addition to being a climate pollutant, methane, which seeps out of leaky flares, is also the primary precursor to the asthma-causing pollutant ground-level ozone.

Methane emissions have slid under the rug for years — in part because the gas is invisible to the human eye, but also because systems for monitoring emissions are less comprehensive and therefore more uncertain than for CO2. Sometimes, incomplete flaring leads to black smoke that is visible, also known as black carbon. But in recordings at oil and gas production sites without a special camera, you can also see a lot of sky.

The increased use of optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras in recent years has made it possible to watch dark plumes of otherwise unseen pollutants escape from inactive-looking infrastructure, like steel storage tanks and thin metal chimneys.

Sharon Wilson, a senior field advocate for Earthworks and co-author of the report on unpermitted flaring, is a certified optical gas imaging thermographer and has been busy capturing footage of oil and gas production sites around the U.S. since 2014.

It’s only when putting an OGI camera up to one’s face, Wilson told Truthout, that dark plumes of pollutants become visible, turning landscapes into what look like war zones. “If people could see with their naked eye what I see with my lens, there would never have been a fracking boom.”

According to the report, many flares are left unlit, which means they are seeping methane straight into the atmosphere, rather than burning it, which makes the release visible and at least converts the gas into less-potent carbon dioxide.

To assess flaring operations in the Permian, Wilson and co-author Jack McDonald pulled from two data sets. One was generated from Environmental Defense Fund helicopter flyovers using OGI cameras from the sky to capture flares in January, March and June of 2020. After ensuring the data was focused specifically on the area of the Permian Basin in Texas, rather than in New Mexico, the authors cross-referenced that data with permits logged in the RRC’s database.

If there was any overlap between a flare observed during flyovers and one for which a permit could be identified in the database, over any period, the authors gave the producer and regulators the benefit of the doubt, and counted that site as permitted. But ultimately, of the total 227 flares they ended up counting, a mere 35 sites had permits to flare every time they were observed to be doing so. Many companies were found to be flaring without ever obtaining a permit, including Diamondback Energy, Conoco and Shell.

In Texas, flaring permits are governed by a state administrative law known as Rule 32. Under the rule, flaring is only legal for the first 10 days of a new oil and gas operation. After that, the practice is illegal without a permit, except for during 24-hour emergency periods. But the law does not clearly define what conditions oil and gas companies need to justify a permit or emergency exemption.

As such, the operations that have received permits have essentially been rubber-stamped, the report suggests. Operators have applied for and received permits to flare for a host of nebulous reasons such as “inconsistent curtailments” or “economic conditions.” Still, the vast majority are unpermitted, the report suggests.

Earthworks visited one site known as the “Seattle Slew” 14 times with an optical gas camera, as is described in the report, and detected pollution every time — nine of which involved flaring specifically. The owner of the site, MDC, has never been issued a permit from the RRC, according to the analysis. Earthworks reported as much to the TCEQ.

According to correspondence Earthworks obtained via a public records request, the state agency did reach out to the company about the findings. “There is no way to estimate how much gas was vented, as we don’t measure our tank gas … since it isn’t sold to gas sales but instead sent to the combustor for incineration,” MDC replied. “Also, we don’t know for how long this gas was vented to the atmosphere.”

In spite of this response, the state agency did not issue any violations, Earthworks found. A TCEQ representative told Truthout that “compliance determinations were made based on a review of the completed questionnaires and other relevant data such as reported emission events and applicable permits or authorizations,” noting that the facility did have a permit covering other emissions, including volatile organic compounds, nitrous oxide and carbon.

Wilson says she’s documented numerous similar instances in which she’s reported emissions violations on the ground, such as at Diamondback’s Waler State Battery site, which regulators have all but shrugged off.

In response to the report, RRC Spokesperson Andrew Keese told Reuters, “A short-term observation of a flare from a flyover and absence of an explicit exception does not necessarily mean the observed flaring is illegal.”

In July, the RRC published data suggesting that the practice of flaring was declining across the state, dropping from 2.29 percent of all natural gas produced in June 2019, to 0.65 percent in May 2021. “Texas is seeing significantly reduced flaring rates as a result of improved technologies, infrastructure and regulatory processes,” RRC Chair Christi Craddick said in a statement.

McDonald, however, said that dealings with the two state agencies do not offer much assurance. “From what we can tell, this seems to be an issue broadly across Texas, with just this kind of systemic lack of will to go and get these permits.”

Without closely monitoring releases, or following up on violations, the agency’s data is a moot point. “Even if they are right that exempt flaring is exclusively the cause of the flaring, the RRC does not know how much flaring is happening,” McDonald said. “That means they are dramatically underestimating the amount of flaring that’s actually happening in the state because they aren’t able to account for all those exempt flares.”

As Clean Energy Wire has reported, oil and gas production in places like the Permian has expanded faster than infrastructure to transport it. Oil is still profitable, but gas prices are so low that it’s cheaper to burn it on the spot, or release it directly, than to pay to send it to markets.

The report concludes with a handful of actions state lawmakers and regulators could take to bring protocols in line with the regulatory agencies’ purported missions, including making all permitting data and enforcement actions publicly available online; updating Rule 32 such that it clearly identifies what justifications warrant a flaring permit or an emergency exemption; and creating an impartial panel free of oil and gas interests within the RRC to review all flaring permits.

But Wilson says real reform will also require action beyond state lines. “After over a decade, it’s pretty clear that Texas has no intention of enforcing any rules,” Wilson said, noting lawmakers’ and regulators’ conflicts of interest. The RRC’s Craddick, for instance, owns land with her father — a state congressman — that generated over $100,000 from natural gas production in 2019, according to The Texas Tribune.

The Biden administration is likely to unveil a new methane rule in September. In anticipation, the RRC and TCEQ penned a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in July requesting minimal changes. “The TCEQ has a robust air permitting program. Air permits typically include fugitive monitoring programs and control of volatile organic compound emissions, which could include methane emissions since methane is not separated from [volatile organic compounds] prior to atmospheric release,” agency directors wrote. “Additional requirements to control and monitor methane specifically are burdensome to the regulated community, duplicative and are therefore unnecessary.”

Given that the EPA delegates how states must implement Clean Air Act regulations, Wilson says the moment warrants the strongest possible rule, such as one that would lead to slashing oil and gas methane emissions 65 percent by 2025. “If Biden is serious about taking action on the climate, the federal government will need to step in,” she said. “What they give, they can take away.”

“Blue” hydrogen is worse for the climate than coal, study says

Gas companies and utilities are in a pickle. Their entire business model relies on the extraction, transport, and combustion of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases known to humankind. With many countries aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, these companies face an uncertain future.

One solution they’ve proposed is slipping hydrogen into their distribution lines, either partially or fully replacing natural gas, so that people can burn it to heat their homes or generate electricity. When produced using solar and wind power, hydrogen is a zero-carbon fuel, and while refitting natural gas infrastructure would be expensive, it would give gas-only utilities a reason to exist.

The problem is that producing so-called “green” hydrogen is expensive and will remain so for a decade or more, according to forecasts.

To buy themselves time, utilities and oil and gas companies have proposed producing hydrogen from natural gas. Most hydrogen today is made by exposing natural gas to high heat, pressure, and steam in a process that creates carbon dioxide as a byproduct. In what’s called “gray” hydrogen, all that carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. In “blue” hydrogen, facilities capture the carbon dioxide and sell it or store it, usually deep underground.
Blue hydrogen is viewed by some as a bridge fuel, a way to build the hydrogen economy while waiting for green hydrogen prices to come down. In the meantime, blue hydrogen is also supposed to pollute less than gray hydrogen, natural gas, or other carbon-intensive fuel sources.

Except blue hydrogen may not be low-carbon at all, according to a new peer-reviewed study. In fact, the study says the climate may be better off if we just burned coal instead.

Achilles’ heel

There are essentially two ways to make blue hydrogen, and both rely on steam reformation, the process of using high heat, pressure, and steam that cracks methane and water to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. For both approaches, carbon dioxide from steam reformation is captured and stored or used. The difference between the two is whether carbon dioxide is captured from the generators that power the steam-reformation and carbon-capture processes.

When you add it all up, capturing carbon from all parts of the process—steam reformation, power supply, and carbon capture—eliminates just 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions compared with only capturing carbon from steam reformation. The lowest-carbon blue hydrogen had emissions that were just 12 percent lower than for gray hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen’s Achilles’ heel is the methane used to produce it. Methane is the dominant component of natural gas, and while it burns more cleanly than oil or coal, it’s a potent greenhouse gas on its own. Over 20 years, one ton of the stuff warms the atmosphere 86 times more than one ton of carbon dioxide. That means leaks along the supply chain can undo a lot of methane’s climate advantages.

Anyone who lives in an area with old pipelines knows that gas leaks are an unfortunate reality. Methane is a small molecule, and it’s great at finding cracks in the system. Gas wells and processing facilities are also pretty leaky. Add it all up, and anywhere between 1-8 percent of all energy-related methane escapes into the atmosphere, depending on where and how it's measured.

In the new study, Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson, the paper’s authors and two well-known climate scientists, assume a leakage rate of 3.5 percent of consumption. They arrived at that number by scouring 21 studies that surveyed the emissions of gas fields, pipelines, and storage facilities using satellites or airplanes. To see how their 3.5 percent rate affected the results, Howarth and Jacobson also ran their models assuming 1.54 percent, 2.54 percent, and 4.3 percent leakage. Those rates are based on EPA estimates at the low end and, at the high end, stable carbon isotope analysis that isolated emissions from shale gas production.

No matter which leakage rate they used, blue hydrogen production created more greenhouse gas equivalents than simply burning natural gas. And at the 3.5 percent leakage rate, blue hydrogen was worse for the climate than burning coal.

“Combined emissions of carbon dioxide and methane are greater for gray hydrogen and for blue hydrogen (whether or not exhaust flue gases are treated for carbon capture) than for any of the fossil fuels,” Howarth and Jacobson wrote. “Methane emissions are a major contributor to this, and methane emissions from both gray and blue hydrogen are larger than for any of the fossil fuels.”

Questionable policies

The new carbon accounting may undermine some countries' climate plans, particularly the UK’s. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce a plan in the coming weeks that would shift the country’s energy sector away from natural gas toward a mix of blue and green hydrogen. The government has said it wants 5 GW of “low-carbon” hydrogen capacity by the end of the decade. Oil and gas giants BP and Equinor, taking a cue from government announcements, both announced plans for massive blue hydrogen plants in the country with outputs of 1 GW and 1.2 GW, respectively.

The new study also casts doubt on some plans to shift transportation to hydrogen. Some sectors, like freight and aviation, may end up requiring hydrogen for certain routes. But cars and trucks, which many countries say must be zero-emitting by 2035 or sooner, will have a harder time justifying a switch to hydrogen over straight electrification. Companies that have bet their future on hydrogen, like Toyota, are in a tight spot as their bridge to a truly zero-carbon portfolio takes a hit.
Not all hydrogen suffers from these problems, of course. Green hydrogen, which is made by splitting water using wind or solar power, doesn’t suffer from the same carbon accounting issues. But neither does it reuse oil and gas companies’ existing infrastructure. So while this new study seems to be a pretty damning indictment of blue hydrogen, it’s unlikely to be the final nail in its coffin.

Hydrogen lobbyist quits, slams oil companies’ “false claims” about blue hydrogen

The head of a hydrogen lobbying group has stepped down amid concerns that blue hydrogen made from natural gas would serve as a “lock-in” for fossil fuels.

Oil and gas companies in recent years have been touting the purported advantages of hydrogen made from natural gas. Supporters admit that blue hydrogen is not zero-carbon, but they argue that its use would help build demand and infrastructure while costs for green hydrogen, which is made from renewable power, are brought down.

At issue, though, is whether blue hydrogen is truly low-carbon, as its boosters suggest. According to a recent study, blue hydrogen may be worse for the climate than coal. The low-carbon claims about blue hydrogen hinge on the fact that carbon dioxide needs to be captured at every step, from the steam reformation process that makes the gas from methane to the natural gas generators that provide heat and power for the reactions. Not every step is perfect, and between 10 and 40 percent of the carbon dioxide can evade capture depending on the system.
But where blue hydrogen really suffered in the analysis was when leaky natural gas infrastructure was included in the calculations. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet 83 times more than an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide. Gas pipelines are notoriously leaky in places, and from production to consumption, anywhere between 1.5 and 4.3 percent slips through the cracks. At the low end of that range, blue hydrogen was still worse than burning natural gas because of the additional methane use throughout the process. As assumptions about leakage rates rose above 3.5 percent, blue hydrogen’s climate impact became worse than coal.

Last straw

That study was apparently a tipping point for Chris Jackson, who this week stepped down as chair of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. Jackson, who founded a green hydrogen company two years ago, was head of the industry group for a little over a year. “The energy transition cannot be achieved by one silver bullet, and green hydrogen alone cannot solve all the world’s challenges,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his resignation. “But while there might not be a single ‘right’ answer, there are answers that are wrong.”

Jackson continues by saying that blue hydrogen is “at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use” which would derail goals that the country and the world have set for decarbonizing the economy. He takes particular issue with the fact that oil and gas companies have asked the UK government for decades of subsidies while also claiming that blue hydrogen will be inexpensive to produce. “If the false claims made by oil companies about the cost of blue hydrogen were true, their projects would make a profit by 2030,” he told The Guardian.

“Instead, they’re asking taxpayers for billions in subsidies for the next 25 years. They should tell the government they don’t need it. The fact that they don’t tells you everything you need to know.”

Blue hydrogen hand-outs

The UK government has endorsed hydrogen in its plans to decarbonize the British economy, saying the fuel could reduce the climate impact of heavy industry and long-haul transportation. The recently announced plan calls for blue hydrogen to bridge the gap until green hydrogen is commercially viable.

In the US, the Biden administration appears to embrace blue hydrogen, too. In its infrastructure plan announced in March, the White House called for “investment in 15 decarbonized hydrogen demonstration projects,” which would appear to leave the door open for blue hydrogen. The infrastructure bill currently working its way through Congress calls for the creation of four hydrogen hubs, including one that would demonstrate the production of “clean hydrogen” from fossil fuels. In the Senate version of the bill, “clean hydrogen” means that, for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, two kilograms of carbon dioxide can result. Ideally, most of it is captured and stored, but the bill doesn’t require a specific amount. It only addresses methane leaks from orphaned wells.
The US hydrogen lobbying organization, the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Energy Association, also supports both blue and green hydrogen, collectively calling them “low-carbon hydrogen” in a recent report. Ars has reached out to the group to ask if it has a stance on blue hydrogen, specifically. We’ll update this article if we hear from the association.

In the UK, such hubs are already forming, with both Equinor and BP announcing blue hydrogen plants which, together, would represent nearly half of the government’s targeted 5 GW of “low-carbon” hydrogen capacity.

CDFingers wrote: Mon Aug 23, 2021 10:32 am The success of hydrogen from methane as a fuel hinges on what you do with that extra carbon. You have to go one step further and make things out of that carbon as a necessary part of hydrogen as a fuel. We have to stitch the best course of action out of multiple processes from multiple sources. The steps are quit putting carbon into the air as you sequester more carbon in a variety of ways. The solution keeps running into the future, and we have to chase. There is no other choice. I say sequester carbon into car bodies for vehicles that run on hydrogen.

CDFingers