Natural Gas: “Clean” Energy in the West?
June 2, 2009
By Roger Turner
It’s no secret the West is heating up. According to a 2008 report by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and NRDC, entitled Hotter and Drier: The West’s Changed Climate, the American West in the last five years has experienced warming “70 percent more than the overall planet’s warming.”
It’s uncertain how much of western warming can be traced to oil and gas development, but the rate of development has been feverish. In 2007 the U.S. had over 800,000 producing oil and gas wells on federal and non-federal lands – 466,641 producing natural gas wells and 336,088 oil wells. Until recently the oil and gas industry essentially had carte blanche on public lands. Between 2001 and 2007 the Bush administration issued leases on over 26.6 million acres of onshore public lands, in addition to 45 million acres already under lease on federal lands.
The three regions in New Mexico most impacted by industrial development are the San Juan and Raton basins in the northwestern/eastern part of the state and the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico.
There are over 40,000 oil and gas wells in the state, three oil refineries, several gas processing plants, and tens of thousands of miles of gas pipelines. The San Juan Basin alone has 26,000 oil and gas wells and 6,000 miles of service roads.
East of the Permian Basin in North Texas lies the vast Barnett Shale area, a geological formation under Fort Worth and Dallas covering 5,000 square miles and 21 counties, and possibly the largest onshore natural gas field in the U.S. – with over 7,700 gas wells drilled and another 4,700 wells pending. This region may offer an instructive model for New Mexicans: whether the “economics” of such development balances the environmental impacts.
Economic predictions are never stable. In early 2008 before the slump became a reality, the industry was predicting 108,000 jobs by 2015. 2006 revenues were robust: $491 and $228 million to federal and local governments, respectively. Leases to property owners were averaging between $15,000 and $28,000 per acre. There was no reason to doubt the drilling frenzy would not endure.
Industry downplays the environmental impacts. Coal is “dirty” and gas is “clean” energy, but a recent study by Al Armendariz, a professor with the Southern Methodist University’s Department of Environmental and Civil Engineering, shows otherwise. The study, “Emissions from Natural Gas Production in the Barnett Shale Area and Opportunities for Cost-Effective Improvements,” was commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund.
It documents the sources and volumes of air pollution, especially volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that leak from storage tanks, well-drilling and fracing engines, gas processing and transmission lines, and from compressors used to move natural gas through pipelines, often running on natural gas from the same pipeline. VOCs are smog-forming compounds, the stuff that exacerbates respiratory diseases.
Armendariz predicts 2009 emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area to be 33,000 tons per day (tpd), which is roughly equivalent to the greenhouse gas impacts from two 750-megawatt coal-fired power plants.
Little research has been done on emissions from the oil and gas industry, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists natural gas systems – from production to distribution – as the second-leading cause of methane emissions. Methane is a primary ingredient in natural gas and is one of the gases linked to global warming. Not until recently have studies appeared that link natural gas production to air pollution in North Texas.
Storage tanks are another source. In the daylight, a storage tank looks innocuous; but in infrared light, a plume of vapor can be seen escaping from the tank’s vent. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in 2006 estimated that storage tanks alone account for about 38 tons of volatile organic compounds a day, or 7 to 8 percent of the volatile organic compounds in the North Texas air. These chemicals are a key ingredient in ground-level ozone.
Ozone is considered a secondary pollutant, one not formed directly by the burning of fossil fuels. More toxic nitrogen oxides produced by such combustion react in presence of sunlight to form ozone.
Ozone pollution can also be a killer, especially near large population centers close to oil and gas operations, such as Houston, Texas, and Bakersfield, Calif. A March, 2009, article by the New England Journal of Medicine reports on an 18-year study of nearly half a million people. It shows that long-term, low-level exposure to ozone can be lethal to people already suffering from respiratory diseases, such as COPD, emphysema, and pneumonia. Short-term effects include increased asthma attacks and hospitalizations.
In New Mexico there have been two recent prominent legal challenges to federal land management agencies regarding the impacts of energy development on the region’s air quality. The first lawsuit, filed in December, 2008, by several New Mexico-based citizen groups and national environmental organizations, cited the failure of the BLM to consider long-standing federal laws, including a 2001 Department of Interior (DOI) order requiring the BLM to address global warming. These groups, including Amigos Bravos, the San Juan Citizens Alliance, and the Southwest Environmental Center, found the DOI order had been “buried” and ignored by the BLM. This was later confirmed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2007.
In New Mexico, oil and gas operations are conservatively estimated to account for 23 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, second only to transportation, and nationally the EPA estimates 24 percent of total methane emissions come from industrial drilling. The suit also cited the BLM’s failure to consider over 120 technologies and practices, identified by the EPA’s “Natural GasSTAR” program, to reduce methane waste.
As Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the director of the Western Environmental Law Center’s Global Warming and Energy Program, noted: “BLM should build on the game-changing leadership exercised by the State of New Mexico, which has called for a 20 percent reduction in methane emissions from oil and gas processes by 2020…”
Another lawsuit, by WildEarth Guardians, Dine CARE and Carson Forest Watch, was filed in April, 2009, against the U.S. Forest Service and the BLM over the failure of these agencies to curb air pollution in the San Juan Basin. The lawsuit targets the BLM’s decision to lease 28,510 acres through three separate lease actions in 2008. The groups contend this could lead to 712 new oil and gas wells without any safeguards for limiting ground-level ozone. The U.S. Forest Service is also cited for allowing industrial development on nearly 5,000 acres of the Jicarilla Ranger District, clearing the way for more than 700 new wells.
Given the nature of “boom and bust” in the petroleum industry, it’s too early to declare the great American drilling boom over. Global oil prices and American natural gas prices are down two-thirds since last summer. The lower prices are currently putting a halt to ambitious efforts to squeeze more oil from aging fields and to tap new sources of natural gas. It’s time to give the planet a well-deserved rest.
The Department of Interior under the new Secretary, Ken Salazar, has clearly indicated a new emphasis on developing renewable energies and “smart” transmission grids. Like any good “bear,” the petroleum industry will be stockpiling its supplies, waiting for the day when prices recover. And they will.
If only the earth could recover from the past eight years of nearly unregulated drilling in the West.
Roger Turner currently represents the SW Environmental Center (in Las Cruces) for the Otero Mesa Coalition, a group advocating for the permanent protection of Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico. He can be reached at: roger@wildmesquite.org.
Internet sources:
Texas/National Air Quality:
SMU Prof. Armendariz’ Study on Emissions from Natural Gas Production in the Barnett Shale Area and Opportunities for Cost-Effective Improvements.
URL: http://www.edf.org/documents/9235 Barnett_Shale_Report.pdf
Relevant website for Tx.Air Quality: http://www.tceq.state.tx.us
March 12, 2009 article in New England Journal of Medicine on Long-Term Ozone Exposure and Mortality. Volume 360:1085-1095
URL: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/login?uri=/
Lawsuits:
2009: filed by Wildearth Guardians, etc. against BLM for global warming in the San Juan Basin.
URL: http://www.wildearthguardians.org/Portals/0/support_docs/complaint-san-juan-4-29-09.pdf
Dec, 2008: complaint filed by Western Environmental Law Center against BLM and USFS. This complaint was the basis for the New Mexico lawsuit.
URL:
http://www.westernlaw.org/files-1NM%20BLM%20OG%20Complaint%201%2009.pdf
For more info: http://westernlaw.org
Contact Erik Schlenker-Goodrich at: eriksg@westernlaw.org
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I apologize for being so long in reacting to this very informative piece. By discussing sources of pollution from the “clean” natural gas industry such as leakages from storage tanks and the processes of procurement and transmission of this safer source of energy, Roger Turner has enlightened me on a whole other aspect I’d never even thought of or considered — its contribution to global warming through methane released into the environment.
However, I never felt the need to, being as how its vastly greater safety was sold us long, long ago. But after reading this I can safely say, thanks to Turner (as supported by the EPA), I can say, “There is methane in his madness.”
Thank you — this was excellent.