Methane emissions from hydraulically fractured wells are 50 percent lower than estimates found in a 2010 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to survey results released Monday by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and America's Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA).
The API-ANGA study found the venting of methane into the atmosphere during liquids unloading – a technique to remove water and other liquids from the wellbore to improve the flow of natural gas -- is 86 percent lower than EPA's estimates.
EPA had estimated that liquids unloading accounted for 51 percent of EPA's total "Natural Gas Systems" methane emissions in the 2010 inventory. Applying emission factors based on ANGA/API data reduces the calculated emissions for this source by 86 percent, from 4.5 million metric tons to 637,766 metric tons of methane.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Too Bad It's No Longer a Scientific Argument -- Fracking
Link here to Rigzone.
