Emissions

President Obama is expected to make a speech on Thursday — five days before the State of the Union — on climate change and methane emissions. He is expected to submit plans to help reverse the former and reduce the latter.

A small group of natural gas wells in the U.S. onshore may account for a majority of the methane emissions linked to two major sources — pneumatic controllers and liquid unloadings — researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) said Tuesday.

The natural gas industry lauded the results of a second methane emissions study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund as proof that producers are leading the effort to reduce emissions.

Surging U.S. natural gas supplies not only are increasing employment in the energy patch, but the boom has opened the door to prospects in the methane mitigation business, according to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

Houston-based independent Southwestern Energy Co., which only develops natural gas in North America, is one of the initial partners in a multinational coalition of producers that Tuesday committed to slash methane emissions as part of a strategy to tackle climate change by the United Nations (UN).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this fall will release a strategy to deal with methane emissions from natural gas and oil pipelines and wells that may include both regulatory approaches and recommended voluntary steps,according to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

Citing the U.S. natural gas transmission industry’s work over the last 30 years in greatly reducing the number of pipeline leaks as a result of pipeline safety efforts, maintenance programs and modernization and expansion projects to ensure system reliability and resiliency, the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America’s (INGAA) board of directors vowed Tuesday to build on the industry’s success by developing guidelines that enhance efforts to discover and repair leaks from pipelines and associated equipment.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been doing a lackluster job of addressing methane emissions from natural gas distribution pipelines, and more than $192 million in natural gas was lost in 2011 through pipeline leaks, according to the agency’s Inspector General (IG).

Life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from natural gas-fueled power plants are the same whether they are fueled with gas from shale or conventional basins, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.