To: Detroit/Seattle
Workers' Voice mailing list
November 13, 2021
Re: Energy companies haven’t even plugged methane leaks
by Phil West, Seattle Workers’ Voice
On Friday, October 29, about 400 people gathered on the waterfront
in Seattle to demand action against climate change. This march was
called by the local 350.org chapter with the participation of other
environmental groups. The Seattle Communist Study Group distributed a
leaflet consisting of three recent articles from the Detroit/Seattle
list emphasizing the need to oppose false solutions to the climate
crisis. (See http://www.communistvoice.org/SWV-211029.pdf)
Mainly spirited young people gathered for this march, which was in
response to an international call for demonstrations before the COP26
climate conference gathered in Glasgow, Scotland.
The marchers created a climate memorial and enacted a massive die-in
outside of JPMorgan Chase’s Pacific Northwest HQ. They took these
demands directly to the offices of Liberty Mutual, an insurance company
that provides essential insurance for new fossil fuel projects like
Line 3 and the Trans Mountain pipeline. At Seattle City Hall, they
dropped a massive banner and demanded that the City Council pass the
Solidarity Budget and ensure all new homes in Seattle are built with
clean energy, not fossil fuels. Just two days before the start of the
historic Glasgow Climate Talks, the message was clear to corporations
and politicians alike: the need for climate justice must be taken
seriously and urgently. []
by Pete Brown, Detroit Workers’ Voice
Methane, the major constituent of natural gas, is a major greenhouse gas (GHG). (1) Molecule for molecule, it’s over 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere and planet. There isn’t nearly as much of it in the atmosphere, of course, and it breaks down much more quickly than CO2, so it doesn’t have as strong or long-lasting an effect. But in the short term it’s a powerful force for warming the planet, and scientists are worried that its short-term effects could trigger climate tipping points and lead to disastrous cascading events. The major contributor to methane emissions is the oil and gas industry. Other sources are agricultural livestock (burps and farts from cows and hogs) and the waste industry (landfills). Methane emissions from melting permafrost are also a growing concern, but if we could slow down or stop global warming, this concern would recede.
Burning natural gas is not a substitute for eliminating GHG, as it produces carbon dioxide. Even if it produces less carbon dioxide for the same amount of energy than other fossil fuels, this is not only a substantial amount, but along the way, as natural gas is extracted from the earth, concentrated, and then piped thousands of miles all over the U.S., tons of methane leak into the atmosphere. This leakage also occurs when natural gas is flared off during oil and gas production, as well as in leaks from abandoned oil and gas wells. The promotion of natural gas as a “transition fuel” is thus a false solution to global warming, but so long as natural gas is being used, plugging these leaks is essential to help cut down greenhouse gas emissions. For that matter, even after natural gas is replaced as a fuel, the leaks from abandoned wells will still have to be plugged. Plugging leaks is regarded as one of the relatively easier ways of reducing greenhouse emissions, and climate scientists say it should be done alongside the cutback of carbon oxide emissions. So why don’t we plug them?
Production and distribution of natural gas is in the hands of capitalist corporations that, frankly, don’t give a damn. Some of the worst accidents in the past have inspired legislation and building codes that forced gas corporations to be more careful about extracting and piping gas. But there remain countless leaks around gas wells and pipes.
The first excuse of the corporations is, “We don’t know where to look.” It’s beyond them; they simply can’t locate the leaks. They’re waiting for advances in technology to pinpoint the leaks. One quick reply should be: Follow your nose. Anyone can locate a working oil or gas well by the noxious fumes leaking out of it. Methane itself doesn’t smell, but hydrogen sulfide does, and if the well is leaking hydrogen sulfide, methane is probably going along with it. But of course the gas corporations don’t care about hydrogen sulfide; it only causes asthma and exacerbates heart disease and COPD. Their solution to that problem is to post signs around oil wells saying “Stay away!” and to build their mansions elsewhere.
But are there more precise ways of locating methane leaks? Yes, of course, the technology does in fact exist. Gas companies themselves can detect leaks around their refineries and burn off excess methane in “flares”. And in 2019 a couple New York Times reporters flew around oil fields in Texas with some high-tech equipment on board showing how easy it is to locate methane leaks, even from high in the sky. (2) Using a combination of gas detectors and video cameras, this reporter showed massive amounts of methane leaking from holding tanks, pipes, sheds and flaring smokestacks. So the technology exists; but do gas companies use it? Asked about this, one corporate executive replied, “It’s not cost effective.” If they detected it, then they’d be expected to plug the leaks; and to hire people to go around monitoring methane and then plugging leaks would not pay. So to hell with it. It’s only the atmosphere, after all.
The problem is not only working, productive oil and gas wells, but also old abandoned wells still leaking methane. These old holes in the ground have been leaking gas since they were abandoned, some of them a century ago or more. How do the oil capitalists escape responsibility for this? The typical ways: they declare bankruptcy, they change the name of their company and skip town. If hauled to court, they delay things until the statute of limitations runs out. Some old wells have been capped and sealed, but the vast majority have not. (3) Aside from contaminating groundwater and agricultural land, these abandoned mines are ugly sores on the landscape.
And there aren’t just a few. In the province of Alberta (Canada) alone there are about 100,000 abandoned oil and gas wells. (4) In the U.S., a study by the Environmental Defense Fund found 81,000 registered, documented abandoned wells. (5) These are ones that state governments have properly registered and listed to be capped, sealed and cleaned up some time in the far-off future. But the federal EPA estimates there are actually millions of abandoned wells in the U.S. Some states like Oklahoma are trying to finance the closing of old wells by fees levied on working wells, but it’s estimated it will take Oklahoma a century or more to catch up; and as the oil industry declines, this will eliminate the fees.
So methane leaks from oil and gas wells and pipelines, which are regarded as one of the relatively-easier sources of greenhouse emissions to fix, turn out to be an old, persistent problem due to the irresponsible social behavior of our honored corporate leaders. The capitalists consider it’s “not cost efficient” to monitor and plug methane leaks, so they lie, they look the other way and pretend everything is fine while the atmosphere heats up. They pretend to favor methane regulation while their trade associations lobby for lifting regulations. In the meantime, while Biden and Congress wring their hands and spout hot air, methane emissions are actually worsening. Methane emissions sharply increased in the 2000s, most likely due to the increase in fracked oil and gas. (6) Fracturing the earth seems to intensify the release of methane and to open up avenues for leaks. Even during the pandemic, when overall GHG emissions declined due to the drop in economic activity, the percentage of methane in the atmosphere increased. The exact causes of this are not well understood, but one thing is clear: methane is a serious and worsening problem.
The “solutions” being offered by Biden’s Democrats are minimal at
best, as they continue to support natural gas as a “bridge” fuel and to
support market measures as a way to “incentivize” (i.e., bribe) the
capitalists to consider reducing their GHG emissions. But such measures
have failed at decarbonizing the economy in the past few decades and
will fail in the future. Our corporate and government leaders can’t
even agree on phasing out coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, much less
on slashing fossil fuels altogether. (7) What’s needed is comprehensive economic planning to make the transition to a non-carbon economy.
(1.) Hiroko Tabuchi, “Halting the Vast Release of Methane Is Critical for Climate, the U.N. Says:
A major United Nations report will declare that slashing emissions of
methane, the main component of natural gas, is far more vital than
previously thought.” The New York Times, April 4, 2021.
(2.) Jonah M. Kessel and Hiroko Tabuchi, “It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible: Immense
amounts of methane are escaping from oil and gas sites nationwide,
worsening global warming, even as the Trump administration weakens
restrictions on offenders.” The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2019.
(3.) Roberto Suro, “Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells Become Pollution Portals.” The New York Times, May 3, 1992, Section 1, Page 20. .
(4.) Alec Jacobson (photographs and text), “These Zombies Threaten the Whole Planet: Canada’s
oil patch has nearly 100,000 suspended wells, neither active nor
capped, and they’re a worrying source of planet-warming methane.” The New York Times, Oct. 30, 2020.
(5.) See the Environmental Defense Fund’s map of documented “orphan” (abandoned) wells in the U.S.
(6.) Kessel and Tabuchi, op. cit.
(7.) Kate Aronoff, “If the G20 Can’t Even Agree to Phase Out Coal, We’re Well and Truly Screwed: Coal is the most obvious and easiest target of the energy transition. Yet world leaders are dragging their feet.” The New Republic, October 26, 2021, <>
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