Scientists now say some studies claiming the increase in oil and gas activities over the past several years did not result in a large jump in methane emissions.
The scientists are none other than those at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado Boulder. Their new study says methane emissions from drilling did not result in large increases despite the growth in oil and gas production in the past ten years.
“The assumption of a time-constant relationship between methane and ethane emissions has resulted in major overestimation of an oil and gas emissions trend in some previous studies,” according to the paper.
It found that previous studies had overestimated the amount of pollution from oil and gas activity by as much as 10-fold in some cases, according to a report in the Denver Post.
“What this means is if you want to track methane, you have to measure methane,” the paper’s lead author Xin Lan stated in the release.
But emissions of methane — a greenhouse gas that is the second-largest contributor to human-caused global climate change behind carbon dioxide, according to the release — related to oil and gas activity are still increasing at about 3.4% on average each year, with a plus-or-minus margin of 1.4%, the paper stated.
It was published last month by Geophysical Research Letters and included examinations made from 2006 to 2015 of 20 regional sites across North America that were selected because they capture air masses that are well-mixed and represent influences of emissions from large areas, five of which were heavily impacted by oil and natural gas development.
