Free-Market Magic In The Permian - As Natural Gas Prices Drop, Venting And Flaring Of Gas Spike
Sharon Wilson trained her bulky, black camera on a thin, steel tower next to a natural gas compression station. The screen of her Optical Gas Imaging camera lit up with warm colors, indicating that methane was pouring out of the tower. Wilson, of the non-profit Oilfield Witness, was recording the Oklahoma-based company ONEOK’s Coyanosa station in its WesTex pipeline network. The station maintains pipeline pressure of natural gas during transportation.
Wilson documented widespread flaring, venting and other methane releases during a week in the Texas Permian Basin this month. Natural gas prices in the Permian Basin fell below zero during March. When natural gas prices are low, companies are more likely to vent or flare methane. Pipeline capacity to transport the gas out of the Permian Basin is currently limited, which can also result in more flaring. That’s bad news for efforts to fight climate change. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane and the Permian Basin is the single-largest source of methane emissions in the U.S. oil and gas industry. As a greenhouse gas, methane is about 80 times more potent at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
Flaring also releases a variety of hazardous air pollutants, including volatile organic compounds like benzene, a carcinogen, and contributes to ground-level ozone, a pollutant that causes respiratory illness and heart disease. The Permian Basin produces more crude oil than any other in North America and is now the second-most productive gas basin in the country. Drilling for oil yields the biggest profits for energy companies, but oil drilling also produces large volumes of natural gas. Companies flare natural gas if they aren’t able to sell or transport it, a practice known as routine flaring.
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The ONEOK compression station where Wilson documented methane emissions connects gas producing wells in the Permian Basin to the Waha Hub. An ONEOK spokesperson said during the time period Wilson documented emissions at the compression station, “no unpermitted emissions occurred.” However, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the emissions were not reported to their agency, as required by law, and they would be looking into the incident.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26032024/permian-basin-methane-flaring/