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Bloomberg
A natural gas pipeline in Texas leaked so much of the super-potent greenhouse gas methane in little more than an hour that by one estimate its climate impact was equivalent to the annual emissions from about 16,000 US cars.
The leak came from a 16-inch (41-centimeter) pipe that’s a tiny part of a vast web of unregulated lines across the US, linking production fields and other sites to bigger transmission lines. Although new federal reporting requirements start next month for so-called gathering lines, the
incident highlights the massive climate damage even minor parts of the network can inflict.
Energy Transfer LP, which operates the line where the leak occurred through its ETC Texas Pipeline Ltd unit, said an investigation into the cause of the event last month is ongoing and all regulatory notifications were made. It called the pipe an “unregulated gathering line.’’
The timing of the release and its location appeared to match a plume of methane observed by a European Space Agency satellite that geoanalytics firm Kayrros SAS called the most severe in the US in a year. Bloomberg investigations into methane observed by satellite near energy facilities show the invisible plumes often coincide with routine work and deliberate releases.
Methane is the primary component of natural gas and traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. Severely curbing or eliminating releases of the gas from fossil fuel operations is crucial to avoiding the worst of climate change. The International Energy Agency has said oil and gas operators should move beyond emissions intensity goals and adopt a zero-tolerance approach to methane releases.
The ETC Texas Pipeline filing to the TCEQ didn’t include an estimate for how much methane was released and the state agency said it doesn’t regulate releases of the gas.