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One US Oil Field a Key Culprit In Global Ethane Gas Increase

Posted by msmash on from the they-don't-really-care-about-us dept.

An anonymous reader writes: According to scientists, a single U.S. shale oil field is responsible for much of the past decade's increase in global atmospheric levels of ethane, a gas that can damage air quality and impact climate. The Bakken Formation, an oil and gas field in North Dakota and Montana is spewing nearly 2% of the globe's ethane. That translates to about 250,000 tons each year. "Two percent might not sound like a lot, but the emissions we observed in this single region are 10 to 100 times larger than reported in inventories. They directly impact air quality across North America. And they're sufficient to explain much of the global shift in ethane concentrations," said Eric Kort, U-M assistant professor of climate and space sciences and engineering.The Washington Post has more details (paywalled; alternatively you can read this Gizmodo report)

18 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Global Warming season by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Happens every year between March until August.

    1. Re:Global Warming season by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Only in the northern hemisphere. From March until August the southern hemisphere experiences something nobody is talking about called global cooling.

    2. Re:Global Warming season by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Meanwhile the Earth continues to warm, as predicted. Ice continues to melt, as predicted. Sea level continues to rise, as predicted. The oceans continue to acidify, as predicted.

    3. Re:Global Warming season by inode_buddha · · Score: 2

      ... and this entire thread went to shit, as predicted.

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      C|N>K
  2. Blame the regulators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    who make it 10,000% harder to lay the pipelines required to collect and harvest the gas. This resulted in the producers taking the option to flare the gas off. It's a valuable product, but harvest made uneconomical by stupid lawmakers.

    1. Re:Blame the regulators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Enlighten us and tell us what laws are they.

  3. No other agenda? by argStyopa · · Score: 2

    I''m sure it's coincidence that this is about the single largest expansion of oil reserves in what the last 50+ years, and is the USs trump card in energy independence from the Middle East?

    Yeah, complete coincidence.

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    -Styopa
  4. So, 3 parts per billion of ozone is a crisis... by cirby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...but 100 parts per billion is pretty much business as usual in the big Californian cities.

    And 50 ppb is what the best-ranked ones produce.

    Before you complain about the chemical being ethane, note that ethane + air + sunlight = ozone.

    1. Re:So, 3 parts per billion of ozone is a crisis... by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ozone in the stratosphere = good
      It blocks UV radiation from the Sun and without it there wouldn't be life as we know it on the dry land of Earth.

      Ozone in the lower troposphere and at the surface = not so good
      It can have serious health effects mainly respiratory in high enough concentrations.

  5. Re:Jealousy... by riverat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The nice thing about the "Church of Climatology" as opposed to those others is that they have actual physical evidence to back up their scriptures.

  6. Re:ethane + air + sunlight = ozone by cirby · · Score: 5, Informative

    The source is the article linked above. As in, the article you should have read before commenting.

    "Ethane reacts with sunlight and other molecules in the atmosphere to form ozone, which at the surface can cause respiratory problems, eye irritation and other ailments and damage crops."

  7. Re:Jealousy... by quantaman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Looks like the Church of Climatology is jealous of the levels of esteem & high regard held for the Church of Scientology and the Westboro Baptist Church, and are exerting maximum effort towards correcting that discrepancy.

    Can't fault the CoC for lack of effort in that regard.

    The Church of Climatology: The US Progressive/Liberal version of the bastard-child of the Westboro Baptist Church and the Church of Scientology if they bred. Even the tactics they use against their critics are nearly indistinguishable.

    Fascinating, I've apparently missed all of the climate scientists going around picketing funerals while sending out private investigators to stalk and blackmail their opponents.

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    I stole this Sig
  8. It's a fair cop by Bruce66423 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Thanks for the slap!

  9. Re:Jealousy... by riverat1 · · Score: 2

    That's the Holy Hockeysticks, thank you very much. There are over a dozen different ones now and they all show pretty much the same thing.

    Consensus is not something that scientists pay attention to to any great degree. Rather it is something useful for the layman in understanding where the science is in the field. For scientists consensus amounts to something they pretty much agree on and don't argue about any more.

  10. What about the Methane???? by TheSync · · Score: 2

    If there is some kind of huge ethane leak from the Bakken, you can be sure there is a huge methane leak as well.

    Ethane makes up 10% mole percent of LNG at most, the other 90% is mostly methane.

    Methane is a very significant global warming gas, more so than CO2, although its half-life in the atmosphere is much shorter than CO2.

    1. Re:What about the Methane???? by ari_j · · Score: 2

      The wells in that region produce mostly crude oil and natural gas. Crude oil is easy to store in tanks, put into tanker trucks, and otherwise get off the well site to the market in a variety of ways that you can use from day 1 of drilling the well. Natural gas must either go into a pipeline, be vented into the atmosphere, or be flared (burned) into the atmosphere. Pipelines can take years to catch up to drilling (not really due to regulation as others have pointed out, but rather due to rapid drilling for profitable oil outpacing thousands of miles of pipeline construction to sell much less profitable natural gas, along with lack of enforcement of regulations intended to restrict flaring to a certain time period after drilling a new well). So a lot of gas has to be vented or flared. Venting is considered worse than flaring for the atmosphere (because methane is a worse global warming gas than CO2 as you pointed out), so it all gets flared. Perhaps flaring burns the methane but not the ethane, or at least not all of it, which is why ethane is the problem we are focusing on here?

  11. Re:Jealousy... by quantaman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Fascinating, I've apparently missed all of the climate scientists going around picketing funerals

    They didn't do that. Why would they?

    They wouldn't. I was pointing out that it was a stupid comparison.

    sending out private investigators to stalk and blackmail their opponents.

    Yes, you did miss it. Maybe because it wasn't actual climate scientists, but the church's parishioners that claim to speak for them.

    Probably not a road you want to go down considering the continuous witch hunts and slanderous accusations thrown at climate scientists.

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    I stole this Sig
  12. A Sngle Oil field? GASP! by Sir+Holo · · Score: 2

    Hardly a field. It covers two Northern US States. That is why it's named the Bakken Formation.