Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that one of the company’s pipelines lost enough methane to equal the annual emissions of roughly 16,000 vehicles. The leak, which occurred in South Texas’ Webb County, lasted little more than an hour.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s particularly adept at trapping heat, according to Axios. It’s far more effective than carbon dioxide when it comes to locking warmth in the atmosphere.
The leak occurred in what Energy Transfer called an “unregulated gathering line” in March. It came just before a United Nations official warned that a “litany of broken climate promises” by corporations and governments has put us “firmly on track toward an unlivable world.”
Kelcy Warren, executive chairman of Energy Transfer, is apparently a fan of Gov. Greg Abbott. He donated $1 million to the incumbent’s reelection campaign after February 2021’s winter freeze wrecked the state’s power grid. Warren's company raked in $2.4 billion amid the grid’s failure, according to Axios.
The oil tycoon has also sued gubernatorial challenger Beto O’Rourke for defamation because the Democrat lambasted the profits Energy Transfer made after the winter storm.
Even though the methane leak is "disappointing," it didn’t exactly come as a surprise to Courtney Cecale, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Texas. She said all pipelines ultimately leak and added that Texas is unfortunately a leader when it comes to the number of leaks.
To be sure, the Energy Transfer leak wasn’t good, but it also wasn’t an aberration, she continued. “This is a bit grim, but it’s really just a drop in the bucket,” Cecale said by email. “The Environmental Defense Fund suggests that the oil and gas industry emits on average 8 million tons of methane per year.”"It's really just a drop in the bucket." – Dr. Courtney Cecale
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Many people expect to zero in on carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere when discussing climate change, she said. While that’s also important, methane is the second-most abundant greenhouse gas and is more than 25 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Cecale said methane’s effect typically hovers around 12 years, which is comparatively short. The idea that carcinogenic chemicals or heavy metals might have also been emitted from the leak is potentially more concerning, she said.
Energy Transfer didn’t return the Observer’s request for comment. Bloomberg reported the company has said it’s investigating the cause of last month’s leak and that “all appropriate regulatory notifications were made.”
Erik Crosman, an assistant professor of environmental science at West Texas A&M University, has noted a dramatic increase in methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector.
“The [Environmental Protection Agency] is just starting to make some efforts to regulate it, but it’s kind of been the Wild Wild West out in the oil and natural gas field in terms of a lot of old, leaky infrastructure that wasn’t being that well-monitored or kept at bay,” he said.
Crosman has studied methane coming from the Permian Basin, which is more leaky than other basins. The Energy Transfer pipeline lost “a ton” of methane for an hour, he said. It would have been a really big deal had it continued unchecked, considering how much methane it lost in just a short span of time.
Methane is much worse in terms of global warming potential when compared with carbon dioxide, Crosman said. Natural gas is a clean fuel and is great, provided our infrastructure doesn’t leak.
“It’s a supercharged greenhouse gas,” he added. “And we need to make sure that we burn it cleanly and we don’t just let it leak out and become part of the global warming problem.”
