High-tech tools can detect careless oil and gas drillers

At Colorado State University’s Methane Emissions Technology Evaluation Center, pumps hissed, a camera oscillated and wind whistled through oil and gas wells. The mechanical symphony could be the soundtrack to a revolution in our ability to detect and measure methane, the invisible, odorless “super pollutant” responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States is the world’s largest oil and gas producer and the largest methane emitter – much of it coming from oil and gas operations. A series of new federal and state laws require energy companies to monitor and address emissions leaks. That’s why companies are lining up to test methane detection devices at the Fort Collins facility.

“Things are moving quickly – people have realized that the legislature is not messing around,” said Ryan Brouwer, facilities manager at the testing center. “We currently have 12 different companies testing. I’m fully booked until the fall and we have a waiting list.”

Brouwer introduced high-pressure tanks that feed gas into wells, other tanks and separators. Their valves, pipe connections and other fittings release methane – the main component of “natural gas” – into the air. Then finely tuned handheld sensors, softball-sized devices mounted on powerful tripods, and equipment attached to drones and aircraft get to work. These sensors report their measurements of the frequency, location and duration of leaks to the center’s scientists, who then compare them with data on known releases.

Why all the fuss? Because methane is an extremely powerful greenhouse gas that is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at storing heat. As an article from the Rocky Mountain Institute puts it, “If CO2 pollution wraps the Earth in a blanket, methane pollution is like wrapping the Earth in over 80 blankets.” Studies show that eliminating these emissions has immediate benefits for the climate and public health.

The methane concentration in the atmosphere is now two and a half times the pre-industrial level and the trend is rising. Agriculture is the largest anthropogenic source (mainly all those burping cows), followed by oil, coal, gas and bioenergy, which account for 46 percent of emissions. Another important factor is the decay of organic material in landfills.

Of these culprits, fossil fuel emissions are perhaps the easiest to combat, as their primary concern is plugging leaks. According to the International Energy Agency, methane emissions from fossil fuels must fall by three-quarters this decade to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. Hence the race at the Colorado State Center to develop and improve sensors to detect methane on the ground and in the air. As these technologies improve, scientific studies find that previous calculations significantly underestimated the actual amount of gas in the atmosphere.

“We saw big differences in methane emissions across regions,” said Evan Sherwin, who led research at Stanford University for a paper published in March in Nature. “If we compare our numbers to the Environmental Protection Agency, our numbers were three times higher.”

Sherwin worked with a team from Stanford, Kairos Aerospace (now Insight M) and other laboratories to conduct aerial surveys over six hydrocarbon-producing regions, taking one million measurements over Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. They estimated that the operations emit 6.2 million tons of methane annually, equivalent to all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use in Mexico.

“We found [that] “Only 0.05 percent of oil and gas production facilities are responsible for half or more of the emissions,” said Sherwin, who now works at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “We now really have the tools to determine the majority of emissions.” pretty quickly.

In addition to worsening the climate crisis, methane emissions represent a $1 billion annual loss for gas companies. The prospect of recovering the escaping gas is enticing energy companies worldwide to fix methane leaks detected by satellites. Six years ago, energy companies from the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative invested in satellite company GHGSat; They have used the satellites to detect and quantify leaks in Iraq, Algeria, Egypt and Kazakhstan. After the results were confirmed by on-site testing, local operators fixed the leaks, said Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, chairman of the OGCI Executive Committee.

“Three problems we discovered were equivalent to approximately one million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent,” he said. “It’s like taking away almost 250,000 cars.” He concluded that detecting and measuring methane “is now at a point where we can potentially start moving the needle at scale.” In fact, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that methane increases in the atmosphere slowed in 2023 from record growth earlier this decade. Still, the year marked the fifth highest increase since 2007.

More than a dozen satellites are now orbiting the planet, searching for methane plumes. Some are privately owned; others are run by governments and nonprofit organizations. Data from selected satellites are available on the International Methane Emissions Observatory online data portal.

Mark Brownstein is a senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, which developed its own methane detection satellite, MethaneSat. “This is data that provides the most comprehensive amount of emissions and the rate at which they are emitted,” he said. “We believe this data is incredibly important to hold countries and companies accountable for the commitments they make.”

However, satellites have limitations. They cannot see beyond cloud cover or over water and have time limitations on the amount of data they can collect from one location. Therefore, according to Dan Zimmerle, director of the Colorado State Methane Center, all types of sensors are needed to make progress in repairing leaky oil and gas facilities and detecting flares that do not completely burn all of the escaping gas.

Zimmerle’s operation is slated to receive $25 million from the Department of Energy and industry partners to modernize equipment, standardize testing solutions and support field testing of methane sensor satellites. The team is looking for locations to test the satellites’ performance.

“We will release a test version,” said Zimmerle. “They will investigate it, we will get a report from them saying what they saw and we will compare it to reality.”