TX Oil Industry Doing Great Job Controlling Methane Leaks, Says TX Oil Industry, Citing TX Oil Industry-Funded Study [View all]

ODESSA — Less methane escaped into the atmosphere from certain oil and gas equipment and oil wells in 2023, according to a report released earlier this month by an energy analytics firm that industry leaders promoted. Environmental experts said more information was needed.

Equipment used to find and produce crude oil, including those that control the pressure and flow of natural gas, pumps and pipes, leaked 25% less methane than in 2022. The report's findings, published by S&P Global, a New York-based company, also included information on the methane leaking from the 162,000 oil wells, from which emissions also decreased. The report focused only on the stage of oil production where companies search, drill and draw crude oil, known as upstream.

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The report sheds light on the industry's efforts to pollute the air less. Still, it's far from a full understanding of how much methane escapes oil field operations, said Jon Goldstein, vice president of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund. Goldstein said emissions under 10 kilograms, which the sensors could not detect, also account for a significant portion of air pollution, even if it is harder to track. He said that, as a result, the conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt. For equipment releasing less than 10 kilograms of methane an hour, researchers used wind gauges detecting plumes of methane in the wind. This method provided an estimate of how much methane certain equipment released.

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Goldstein said that oil and gas operators could be working to comply with methane reduction regulations set by the federal government in 2024, which the industry supported and contributed. Oil and gas companies can be fined if they breach the amount of methane they are allowed to leak. Texas does not require operators to capture methane emissions in their field operations. “There's no consistency. We're talking about an industry that's incredibly diverse, hundreds and hundreds of companies in the U.S. alone that are engaged in oil and gas development,” Goldstein said. “Each one may have a different voluntary program (to reduce methane emissions) that they're implementing with different technologies, and so it's really hard to have an apples-to-apples comparison.” Virginia Palacios, executive director of Commission Shift, an oil and gas watchdog group in Texas, said regulatory agencies should be more active in emission reductions. She said that putting rules that push for monitoring, like satellite and aerial technology, could reduce waste.

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https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/21/west-texas-oil-gas-methane-reduction-report/