Arctic Oil/Gas Aff Inherency
Methane/Drilling DA Answers
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- Livestock and landfill emissions inevitable and outweigh
- Rice is the biggest source of methane emissions
- Effect of fugitive emissions small- increased natural gas solves warming in the long term
- Drilling is safe
- Green completion solves methane emissions
- Green completion lowers emissions by almost 2 million tons a year
Methane/Drilling DA AnswersANY fossil fuel production or consumption releases methane- the link to the aff is tinyWYI.eu ‘13 What’s Your Impact.eu, 2013, WHAT ARE THE MAIN SOURCES OF METHANE EMISSIONS? http://www.whatsyourimpact.eu.org/methane-sources.php Fossil Fuel Mining/Distribution:
What’s Your Impact.eu, 2013, WHAT ARE THE MAIN SOURCES OF METHANE EMISSIONS? http://www.whatsyourimpact.eu.org/methane-sources.php Livestock:
It's not the animals themselves that are at fault, it's the way and the amount of livestock that is raised that should be evaluated. The meat that we eat everyday contributes significantly to total methane emissions because of these 2 reasons. Landfills: As with manure, landfills and open garbage dumps are full of organic matter from our garbage (things like food scraps, newspapers, cut grass and leaves). Everytime new garbage comes in it is pilled over the old garbage that was already there. The organic matter in our garbage gets trapped in conditions where there is no oxygen (anaerobic) and because of this large amounts of methane is created. Rice is the biggest source of methane emissionsReay No Date Dave Reay, PhD in Marine Biology, NERC research fellow for GHG studies, “Methane Sources - Rice Paddies,” No Date At between 50 and 100 million tonnes of methane a year, rice agriculture is a big source of atmospheric methane, possibly the biggest of man-made methane sources. The warm, waterlogged soil of rice paddies provides ideal conditions for methanogenesis, and though some of the methane produced is usually oxidized by methanotrophs in the shallow overlying water, the vast majority is released into the atmosphere. Rice is grown very widely and rates of methane emission may vary greatly between different areas. Differences in average temperature, water depth and the length of time that the rice paddy soil is waterlogged can all result in big regional variations. However, methane emission from worldwide rice agriculture has been well studied in recent years and fairly reliable estimates of global emissions now exist. Emissions from rice paddies can vary hugely during the course of a year. Effect of fugitive emissions small- increased natural gas solves warming in the long termChameides, Dean of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, ‘12 (Bill, “Natural Gas: A Bridge to a Low-Carbon Future or Not?,” 7-20-12, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/-natural-gas-a-bridge-to_b_1690857.html, accessed 9-20-12) PM Since the paper's publication, other investigators and studies have weighed in on the matter, including RealClimate's Gavin Smith; the Council on Foreign Relations' Michael Levi;Ramón Alvarez of Environmental Defense Fund and co-authors; and another Cornell scientist, Lawrence Cathles. But a definitive conclusion has been elusive because the actual magnitude of these fugitive emissions remains very poorly defined. Chapter 3. Methane Leakage Exonerated? The upshot of the debate about the importance of fugitive emissions has led to a general consensus that we need a very thorough investigation into the leakage issue. In short we need to first pin down the magnitude of fugitive emissions and then cut them down by locking the methane up. (See here and here.) But now Cornell's Cathles argues in a new paper published last week in the journalGeochemistry Geophysics Geosystems that fugitive emissions may not be that sinister after all. Or at least not if natural gas is indeed used as a bridge fuel that is first phased in as coal and some oil are phased out and then eventually is itself phased out in favor of carbon-free energy sources.
Of course, there are exceptions to the industry’s sterling track record. But they’re exceedingly rare and not at all indicative of the way the average energy project operates. Visitors to an offshore drilling rig or production platform receive safety training and are outfitted with steel-toed boots, safety goggles, gloves, hearing protection, and a helmet. Once on the rig, their conduct is carefully monitored. Adherence to safe practices is mandatory, greatly reducing risk to life, property, and the environment.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a most reluctant friend of oil and gas, said as much at a recent Gulf of Mexico lease sale: “People of industry stood up and said, ‘We are going to get it right,’ and we are getting it right.” The industry does not have to hang its head. In 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 2.3 incidents of injury and illness per 100 oil and gas workers. That’s compared with 3.5 incidents per 100 for the entire private sector. The U.S. offshore industry experienced an even lower rate of 0.8 incidents per 100 full-time workers. In oil refining, the injury and illness rate was 1.1 per 100 full-time workers versus 4.4 per 100 for the U.S. manufacturing sector overall. A comparison of U.S. pipeline transportation data versus the U.S. transportation and warehousing sector shows that precisely zero pipeline workers experienced injuries and illnesses in 2011. This accomplishment is all the more impressive given that trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of gallons of oil traverse United States pipelines every year Meanwhile, the rest of the transportation sector clocked in a rate of 5.0 safety incidents per 100 full-time employees. Federal data also show improvements in spill rates. A 2012 Interior Department report examined spill records from 1996 through 2010 (the year of the Deepwater Horizon incident). Researchers found that offshore spill frequency was actually “relatively low” despite the fact that Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil production had risen sharply over that time. Spills from oil tankers continued their precipitous decline due in part to the double-hull requirement instituted after the Valdez spill. Unfortunately, environmental groups refuse to acknowledge the oil and gas industry’s excellent safety and environmental record. Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, recently opined: “We need stronger safeguards and increased oversight to reduce the risk of accidents.” She went on to argue that “we need to prioritize safer forms of energy that don’t threaten the lives of our workers and foul our waters. Until then, we’ll remain stuck on this collision course with disaster.” Beinecke is exaggerating and forgetting. The density, scalability, and portability of oil, gas, and coal make them affordable, reliable, and flexible for average consumers. Wind turbines and solar panels, contrarily, are expensive, intermittent, and inflexible—and have their own set of health and safety issues. Most recent studies prove fracking doesn’t have high fugitive emissions—Howarth and others don’t consider flaring and green completionPardo and Barnes 12/4 James A. Pardo and Brandon H. Barnes, McDermott Will & Emery, New research finds shale natural gas production emits less fugitive methane that previously reported, http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=dc62f2d5-b65b-472c-a6f9-648d0a5d7a7d Shale natural gas production emits significantly less fugitive methane than previously thought, concluded researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a November 26, 2012, study published in Environmental Research Letters. According to the researchers, "it is incorrect to suggest that shale gas-related hydraulic fracturing has substantially altered the overall [greenhouse gas] intensity of natural gas production." ¶ Methane has been singled out as one of the most powerful greenhouse gases (GHG) because of its "global warming potential" - or the relative heat trapped in the atmosphere by a gas - which is 20 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Fugitive methane emissions are losses of methane gas that may occur during flowback (the return of fluids), during drill-out following fracturing, and during well-venting to alleviate well-head pressure. Fugitive emissions can also occur as a result of equipment leaks, transportation or storage losses, and processing losses, but in much smaller quantities. ¶ An earlier study by Cornell University professor Robert Howarth, which garnered much media attention, reported that shale gas production had a lifetime carbon footprint greater than coal production, mainly as a result of fugitive methane emissions that Howarth had estimated to be as great as 4,638 Mg per well. In contrast, the MIT study determined that actual fugitive methane emissions average approximately 50 Mg per well after taking into account flaring and green completions technology, both of which are widely used by industry and required under most state regulatory regimes (as well as under new Environmental Protection Agency rules). The MIT researchers evaluated actual production data from approximately 4,000 horizontal shale natural gas wells, and found a potential for about 228 Mg of fugitive methane emissions per well. The researchers cautioned that estimates about fugitive methane emissions had been "inappropriately used in analyses of the GHG impact of shale gas" insofar as actual emissions are reduced — by an average of 178 Mg per well — by flaring and green completion technology. ¶ Hydraulic fracturing stakeholders need to understand the body of publicly available science, as a growing body of research will inform how EPA and other state and federal regulatory agencies will regulate the industry. Green completion solves methane emissionsMcDonnell 12 Tim, “Will Obama's New Rules Make Fracking Better for the Planet?,” Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/04/fracking-rule-epa-obama-air-pollution By 2015, all fracked wells will be required to implement "green completion" equipment, which catches toxic gases like benzene on its way out of the earth and into the atmosphere. But the rule does not directly limit emissions of greenhouse gases.¶ David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the EPA's move to exclude greenhouse gases from the ruling was likely political: "If you're controlling toxic air pollutants, right-wing ideologues are back on their heels, but when the EPA goes after climate change, all the right-wing nuts come out of the woodwork." Still, Doniger stressed that while the rule could have gone further, the mandated equipment would indirectly take a big bite out of methane emissions.
Ann, “New Rules for Gas: Good Policy, Delayed,” http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2012/04/regulating-natural-gas-whats-t.php Notably, the standards include the first federal air pollution regulations for hydraulically fractured (fracked) natural gas wells. That, plus new regulation of other equipment in this industry, represents significant progress in combating air pollution, especially as forecasts project increasing reliance on natural gas for generating electricity. Without these rules, air pollution from new gas wells and equipment would continue to increase; now the industry must begin to clean up nationwide. Once the rule finally goes into full effect, VOC emissions, a precursor of ground-level smog, will be reduced by hundreds of thousands of tons per year; toxic chemicals like benzene will be reduced by 12,000 – 20,000 tons per year. And, as a co-benefit of the pollution control measures needed to achieve the new standards, emissions of methane will be reduced by 1.0 – 1.7 million tons a year. This rule therefore eventually will provide significant air quality and climate benefits.
Shale gas production does not have the greenhouse gas impact Howarth claims- his study manipulates data, ignores modern tech, and uses inappropriate measurements to exaggerate his theoryCathles et al. 12 Lawrence M. Cathles III & Larry Brown, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University; Milton Taam, Electric Software, Inc; Andrew Hunter, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Cornell University; “A commentary on “The greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas in shale formations” by R.W. Howarth, R. Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea”, Climatic Change (2012) 113:525–535, 1/3, Springer Natural gas is widely considered to be an environmentally cleaner fuel than coal because it does not produce detrimental by-products such as sulfur, mercury, ash and particulates and because it provides twice the energy per unit of weight with half the carbon footprint during combustion. These points are not in dispute. However, in their recent letter to Climatic Change, Howarth et al. (2011) report that their life-cycle evaluation of shale gas drilling suggests that shale gas has a larger GHG footprint than coal. They conclude that: & During the drilling, fracturing, and delivery processes, 3.6–7.9% of the methane from a shale gas well ends up, unburned, in the atmosphere. They claim that this is at least 30% and perhaps more than twice the methane emissions from a conventional gas well. & The greenhouse gas footprint for shale gas is greater than that for conventional gas or oil when viewed on any time horizon. In fact, they state that compared with the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from coal, it is 20–100% greater on the 20-year horizon and is comparable over 100 years. They close with the assertion that: "The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over the coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming." We argue here that the assumptions used by Howarth et al. are inappropriate and that their data, which the authors themselves characterize as “limited“, do not support their conclusions. In particular, we believe Howarth et al.’s arguments fail on four critical points: 1. Howarth et al.’s high end (7.9%) estimate of methane leakage from well drilling to gas delivery exceeds a reasonable estimate by about a factor of three and they document nothing that indicates that shale wells vent significantly more gas than conventional wells. The data they cite to support their contention that fugitive methane emissions from unconventional gas production is significantly greater than that from conventional gas production are actually estimates of gas emissions that were captured for sale. The authors implicitly assume that capture (or even flaring) is rare, and that the gas captured in the references they cite is normally vented directly into the atmosphere. There is nothing in their sources to support this assumption. The largest leakage rate they cite (for the Haynesville Shale) assumes, in addition, that flow tests and initial production rates provide a measure of the rate of gas release during well completion, drill out and flowback. In other words they assume that initial production statistics can be extrapolated back to the gas venting rates during the earlier periods of well completion and drill out. This is incompatible with the physics of shale gas production, the safety of drilling operations, and the fate of the gas that is actually indicated in their references. While their low-end estimate of total leakages from well drilling through delivery (3.6%) is consistent with the EPA (2011) methane leakage rate of ~2.2% of production, and consistent with previous estimates in peer reviewed studies, their high end estimate of 7.9% is unreasonably large and misleading. We discuss these issues at length below. 2. Even though the authors allow that technical solutions exist to substantially reduce any leakage, many of which are rapidly being or have already been adopted by industry (EPA 2007, 2009), they seem to dismiss the importance of such technical improve- ments on the GHG footprint of shale gas. While the low end estimates they provide incorporate the potential impact of technical advances in reducing emissions from the sources common to both conventional and unconventional gas, they do not include the potential impact of “green technologies” on reducing losses from shale gas production. The references they cite document that the methane loss rate during completion of unconventional gas wells by modern techniques is, or could be, at least 10 times lower than the 1.9% they use for both their high end and low end estimates. Downplaying ongoing efforts and the opportunity to further reduce fugitive gas emissions in the natural gas industry, while at the same time citing technical improvements in the coal industry, gives a slanted assessment which minimizes the positive greenhouse potential of natural gas. Although the Howarth et al. agree "Methane emissions during the flow- back period in theory can be reduced by up to 90% through Reduced Emission Completions technologies or REC", they qualify this possibility by saying: "However, REC technologies require that pipelines to the well are in place prior to completion." This suggests that if the pipeline is not in place the methane would be vented to the atmosphere, which is misleading. If a sales pipeline is not available, the gas captured by REC technologies could be easily be (and are) flared and the GHG footprint thereby minimized. 3. Howarth et al. justify the 20-year time horizon for their GHG comparison by simply stating that “we agree with Nisbet et al. (2000) that the 20-year horizon is critical, given the need to reduce global warming in coming decades”. But the point Nisbet et al. make in their meeting abstract is that “adoption of 20-year GWPs would substantially increase incentives for reducing methane from tropical deforestation and biomass burning”. Their concern is that the 100-year timeframe would not discourage such methane emissions enough. Everyone would agree that discouraging methane as well as CO2 emissions is desirable, but the Nisbet et al. abstract offers no support whatever for the adoption of a 20-year GWP timeframe when considering replacing CO2 emissions with CH4 emission by swapping coal for gas, and we strongly disagree that the 20 year horizon is the appropriate choice in this context. As Pierrehumbert (2011) explains, “Over the long term, CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, like mercury in the body of a fish, whereas methane does not. For this reason, it is the CO2 emissions, and the CO2 emissions alone, that determine the climate that humanity will need to live with.” In the context of a discussion of the benefits of swapping gas for coal, a 20 year horizon hides the critical fact that the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is far longer than that of methane. Any timeframe is artificial and imperfect in at least some contexts, but a 100 year timeframe at least captures some of the implications of the shorter lifetime of methane in the atmosphere that are important when considering swapping gas for coal. One could argue (although Howarth et al. do not) that the 20- year horizon is “critical” because of concern over triggering an irreversible tipping point such as glacial meltdown. However, if substituting gas for coal reduces (or could reduce) the GHG impact on a 20-year horizon as well as on a 100-year horizon, as we argue below is the case, substitution of gas for coal minimizes the tipping point risk as well. Most workers choose the 100 year timeframe. Hayhoe et al. (2002), for example, show that in the long, 100 year, timeframe but not on the short timeframe of 20 years or so, substitution of gas for coal reduces greenhouse warming. They consider the warming effects of decreasing SO2 and black carbon emissions as coal burning is reduced as well as the warming effects of CO2 and CH4 emissions, and they calculate greenhouse impact of various substitution scenarios over the next 100 years using a coupled atmosphere-ocean energy balance climate model. Their analysis avoids the arbitrariness of GWP factors. Although there are many considerations regarding the transition in the short term, their analysis shows the long term benefits of swapping gas for coal are completely missed by the 20 year GWP factor. 4. Howarth et al. choose an end use for comparing GHG footprints that is inappropriate in the context of evaluating shale gas as a bridging fuel. Coal is used almost entirely to generate electricity, so comparison on the basis of heat content is irrelevant. Gas that is substituted for coal will of necessity be used to generate electricity since that is coal’s almost sole use. The appropriate comparison of gas to coal is thus in terms of electricity generation. The "bridge" is from coal-generated electricity to a low-carbon future source of electricity such as renewables or nuclear (EIA AEO 2011). Howarth et al. treat the end use of electricity almost as a footnote. They acknowledge in their electronic supplemental material that, if the final use is considered, “the ability to increase efficiency is probably greater for natural gas than for coal (Hayhoe et al. 2002), and this suggests an additional penalty for using coal over natural gas for the generation of electricity not included in our analysis”. They address the electrical comparison in an electronic supplement table, however they do so there on the basis of a 20 year GWP and they minimize the efficiency differential between gas and coal by citing a broad range for each rather than emphasizing the likelihood that efficient gas plants will replace inefficient coal plants. Had they used a 100 year GWP and their low-end 3.6% methane leakage rate, shale gas would have about half the impact of surface coal when used to generate electricity (assuming an electricity conversion efficiency of 60% for gas and their high 37% conversion efficiency for coal). The electric industry has a large stock of old, inefficient coal-fired electric generating plants that could be considered for replacement by natural gas (Table 1 in EIA AEO 2011). The much lower construction costs associated with gas power plants (e.g. Kaplan 2008) means modern gas technology will likely replace this old coal technology as it is retired. If total (well drilling to delivery) leakage is limited to less than 2% (which may be the current situation and, in any case, seems well within the capabilities of modern technology; EPA 2007, 2009), switching from coal to natural gas would dramatically reduce the greenhouse impact of electricity generation. Minimizing this point by stressing extreme rather than likely scenarios is perhaps the most misleading aspect of the Howarth et al. analysis. 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