New Mexico’s state budget depends on oil and gas for the bulk of the funds powering our state government. One third of the budget in 2019 came from oil and gas royalties, largely from drilling activity in the San Juan and Permian Basins. Serious air pollution comes from oil mining which the federal administration has largely deregulated in recent years. More pollution will be released as the oil industry shrinks under the oversupply predicament caused by oil price wars and the pandemic economic crisis.
Natural gas or methane often comes out of oil wells along with the oil. Natural gas is a good fuel for transportation, energy generation, and heating. Yet methane is also a powerful pollutant when it gets into the air. Methane is abundant and sells for a low price, giving oil companies little incentive to develop pipelines needed to move it to market. Often oil drillers will discard methane by “flaring” or burning it at the top of pipes thrust into the air. Drillers will vent methane directly into the sky or it comes out of leaks in their drilling systems.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. It traps heat in the atmosphere causing the climate to warm. Recent studies have shown that 3 to 4 times more methane is leaking from oil industry facilities in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico than the federal government has claimed. Daniel Jacob, a professor of atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering at Harvard University said the Permian Basin is “the largest source ever observed in an oil and gas field.” Satellites show a large cloud of methane hanging over the San Juan Basin in northwest New Mexico as well.
Methane poses a serious threat to humanity’s future. The gas is 84 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide which results from burning methane or other hydrocarbons. Though methane only lasts 12 years in the atmosphere, as opposed to centuries in the case of CO2, it accelerates global heating. And the Trump administration has relaxed regulations requiring oil drillers to capture methane to slow global warming.
Under the Clean Air Act, states enforce pollution control laws in the oilfields but there are too few officers relative to the rapidly increasing number of oil wells in states like New Mexico so methane leaks go undetected and unregulated. The oil industry has little incentive to control this pollution voluntarily.
Professor Jacob and his cohorts found that 3.7 percent of the methane being produced in the Permian Basis is leaking into the atmosphere. Regulations call for less than 1% to be lost to leaks and venting. The problem is likely to get worse as oilfields shut down and many rigs are abandoned or mothballed. With many oil producers declaring bankruptcy, leaking rigs will become a taxpayer problem with state and federal governments in line to clean up the abandoned rigs, if they will be cleaned up at all.
A European based satellite system, TROPOMI, is able to pinpoint methane leaks, removing the mystery about the pollutant’s source. Such technological advancements should help law enforcement compel oil companies to clean up their leaks and contain methane. And while the Permian and San Juan Basins are large sources of methane pollution, all oilfields in the US and abroad are leaking the gas with varying degrees of controls by the government and private sector.
The Obama administration imposed regulations to control methane under the Clean Air Act, forcing oil producers to capture the gas, especially when they are drilling on federal public lands. The Trump administration repealed these regulations, which allowed the industry to vent or leak methane into the atmosphere. Now we are seeing large amounts of methane pollution from New Mexico’s main oil producing areas.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, since 1990, the oil industry and its various political organizations have donated $446 million dollars to republican politicians while donating less than a quarter of that amount to democrats. The oil industry uses its lobbying clout to lobby against pollution regulation.
Thus, we see an increase in methane pollution since 2008 when the Obama administration opened more areas to oil drilling. The pollution has increased more with a rapid rise after the election of Donald Trump.
Other Sources
Methane is also released into the atmosphere by natural process and by the meat industry which produces about a third of human produced methane or about 90 million tons of the gas per year. The gas comes from cattle’s digestive tracts and from the decay of huge quantities of animal manure.
Vegetation decays in nature and often produces methane in the process. Wetlands bubble methane. Now, with the climate heating, layers of permafrost in the Arctic are rapidly melting and as they do, methane results as the once frozen vegetation decays. Scientists have also noticed methane bubbling up from lakes in the Arctic where once-frozen organic matter thaws, freeing methane trapped in sediments. The more the climate warms, the more methane comes from decaying organic matter in the Arctic.
What can you do: Support organizations like Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council who litigate to stop air pollution from the oil industry. Vote in the 2020 election for candidates who care about the climate and the future.
Fun fact: Only one country in the world has more obese people than the United States. Only Kuwait has a higher rate of obesity. 35% of American men are obese and 37% of American women are obese according to The Economist.
