Moreover, since methane is invisible and odorless, monitoring and preventing it from being disengaged can be difficult and expensive. As a result, researchers and environmentalists say the industry’s release may well exceed official government estimates.
Methane also seeps out of coal mines – in fact, methane is released more than it does during natural gas production, after all, mainly methane. ember is a clean energy think tank that brings this excellent visual interaction together to demonstrate how this happens.
The short version is that methane is embedded in the coal deposit, and as miners dig out coal seams, the gas escapes and continues to do so after the mine reaches the end of its operating life. Because coal miners focus on extracting coal, they often don’t track how much methane they give up, and regulators won’t get much attention.
According to Ember, coal mines may have a 60% higher methane emissions than official records. Abandoned coal mines are particularly harmful, more than abandoned oil and gas wells. In summary, the annual methane emissions from coal mines around the world have the same impact on climate warming as India’s annual carbon dioxide emissions.
On the gap in the data, some nonprofits themselves have adopted such nonprofits to try to better understand methane emissions globally using ground-based sensors, aerial monitors and even satellites. In 2024, the Environmental Defense Fund launched the Beetle, which carries instruments that can measure methane production from small discrete sources in a wide range of areas.
Ritesh Gautam, a leading scientist at Methanesat, explained that the project revealed some neglected methane emitters. Since its launch, Methanesat has found that in the United States, most methane emissions come from not only some large oil and gas drilling sites, but from many small wells with less than 100 kilograms per hour.
“Edge wells produce only 6% to 7% [oil and gas] In the United States, however, they disproportionately account for nearly 50% of U.S. oil and gas production-related emissions. These facilities produce only less than 15 barrels of oil equivalent per day, but then more than 500,000 barrels are spread across the United States. ”
There are several ways to stop methane emissions, but we don’t use them
The good news is that many tools for methane are already available for use in the energy industry. According to the IEA methane report, prior art can generally avoid the use of about 70% of methane emissions in the fossil fuel sector,” the IEA methane report said.
For the oil and gas industry, this could mean as simple as using better accessories in pipelines to limit leakage and install methane capture systems. And because methane is a fuel, the sold methane can offset the cost of upgrading hardware. Letting it enters the atmosphere is a waste of money and a contributor to the warming.
