650,000-Ton/Yr Methane Plume Detected Over Four Corners Coalbed Methane Development Zone
The largest concentration of methane emissions seen in the U.S. over the past decade has been detected by satellite over the the most active coal-bed methane production area in the country — the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona, according to a new study published Thursday. The hotspot, which predates the current hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boom in the region, is over the San Juan Basin, where energy companies have been drilling and producing natural gas from methane deposits found in underground coal seams for many years. The natural gas is composed of more than 95 percent methane.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, shows that methane emissions from traditional oil and gas development are significantly underestimated over large scales, its authors say. Over the span of a century, methane is 35 times as strong as carbon dioxide as a climate change-driving greenhouse gas and has a significant effect on exacerbating global warming in the short term.
Led by researchers from the University of Michigan and Caltech, the study analyzes seven years of emissions data — from 2003 to 2009 — captured by a now-decommissioned European Space Agency satellite that measured global greenhouse gases between 2002 and 2012. It’s the same satellite a recent Harvard University study used to determine that livestock digestion released more methane than the oil and gas industry did in 2004.
The hot spot the researchers found, which was validated by ground instruments, covers about 2,500 square miles over the Four Corners area, where coal-bed methane development in the area released about 650,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere annually for each of the seven years.
EDIT
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/huge-methane-emissions-hot-spot-in-u.s.-18156