A Breath of Air
The natural gas industry has also found ways to reduce the greenhouses gases and volatile organic compounds it contributes to ozone pollution and climate change.
Although natural gas burns cleaner than other fossil fuels, the drilling and production of oil and gas is responsible for some 18 percent of the world’s human-caused emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is the main component of natural gas, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More methane is produced in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world except Russia.
Under the guidance of an EPA program, EnCana, the Canadian oil and gas giant, is curbing those methane emissions – and might save money doing it. Using infrared cameras, the company finds and seals methane leaks on wells and pipelines that would otherwise be invisible, sharply curtailing levels of some the most dangerous heat-trapping atmospheric gases. According to Richard Haut, project director for the Houston Advanced Research Center, a partner on the Environmentally Friendly Drilling Project, such programs could pay for themselves within two years, and then turn a profit as the extra gas captured goes to market.
The industry has also found ways to reduce another set of dangerous emissions that has been blamed for air quality problems in Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado, among other places: CO2 from trucks and processing plants and the ozone-causing volatile organic compounds. Last winter, when tests showed that high ozone levels had put sparsely-populated Sublette County, Wyo. out of compliance with federal air quality laws normally applied to the nation’s big cities, the industry took a number of straightforward steps to curb the pollution.
Questar Exploration and Production, a prominent Rocky Mountain drilling company, eliminated 62,000 truck delivery trips and the diesel exhaust that came with them by building a network of pipes to transport its fluids.
EnCana began using natural gas instead of diesel fuel to power its 150-foot-tall drilling rigs, a seemingly small change that resulted in 85 percent less volatile organic compounds being spewed into the air. EnCana also installed other, less polluting new equipment, including refinery-grade combustors.
Doug Hock, a spokesman for EnCana, said the company has spent some $25 million on such efforts since 2005.
“Technology is the key driver in all of this,” Hock said. “It is important for policymakers to first understand the technology being used and secondly, allow operators the flexibility for further innovation to occur. This, rather than blanket mandates, will ensure continued reductions in impacts.”
But the industry’s efforts in Sublette County were triggered by an aggressive push by the federal government.
Before the U.S. Bureau of Land Management allowed more drilling in the Jonah Field, one of the gas development areas on public land in Sublette County, the companies had to agree to reduce their emissions there. Companies understood that if they did not agree to the BLM’s conditions in the Jonah Field they might not get more permits to drill in other parts of Sublette County. “There is kind of a big hammer hanging over their heads,” said Chuck Otto, the BLM field manager there.