Tag
Climate Change
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Clean Up All Local Gas Distribution Leaks (Not Just Underground!)
The US Department of Energy and EPA’s Inspector General have called attention in the past two weeks to an important issue – harmful methane emissions from the systems that distribute natural gas in cities and towns. There’s been some effort to clean up methane from natural gas systems in recent…
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Regulation Is Needed: Making “Best” Practices Standard Practice
The recent release of the Administration’s comprehensive strategy for reducing methane emissions raises the question of how best to reduce methane emissions, especially from the oil and gas sector. Can voluntary programs really lead to the methane reductions we need, or are mandatory regulatory programs necessary? While voluntary programs can…
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Do CO2 Injections Pose Risk of Harmful Earthquakes?
How common are measurable earthquakes in association with oilfield operations? The answer is: exceedingly rare. Nevertheless, another scientific paper has raised the possibility of seismic events occurring as a result of injection of CO2 to stimulate new oil production from depleted oil fields. Since this process, known as enhanced oil…
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Seismicity and carbon storage: MIT responds to Zoback
In the December 2012 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a published letter by MIT researchers Ruben Juanez, Howard Herzog and Brad Hagar provides several cogent geophysical counter-arguments to a 2012 PNAS Perspectives piece by Stanford researchers Mark Zoback and Steve Gorelick. The two had…
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Curb Methane Emissions
For several weeks now the public and the media have cast increasing attention on Arctic oil and gas drilling, specifically regarding the plans of Shell to explore in the Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska. This is, pardon the pun, only the tip of the iceberg when it comes…
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Seismic Risk Won’t Threaten the Viability of Geologic Carbon Storage
This week’s rumblings against carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a powerful means to mitigate global climate change come not from any natural geological source, but solely from an opinion piece published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) Perspectives. Despite the arguments of two Stanford…
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Memo To EPA: Stay Strong On Oil and Gas Standards
Next week, EPA will issue final New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for conventional air emissions from the oil and natural gas industry. The standards must require the capture of hundreds of thousands of tons of smog-forming emissions emitted annually by this industry, along with millions of tons of methane. Methane…
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Methane from Oil and Gas: Low-hanging Fruit that EPA Must Pick
November 30th was the last day for public comments on EPA’s proposal to significantly update air emissions limits for most of the oil and natural gas industry. The proposal makes much-needed revisions to existing requirements, which in some cases are over 25 years old, and in expanding the coverage of…
