U.S. energy policy stinks because it accelerates rising methane emissions, which accelerate climate change. The Trump administration is attacking renewable energy, most recently taking a whole-of-government approach to savaging wind power, while aggressively pushing dirty natural gas production and LNG exports, and even threatening countries that try to decrease reliance on fossil fuels.
This is a recipe for disaster. Fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure inevitably release methane, a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Methane has likely caused 40-50% of all warming in the past 20 years. Cutting it is our best chance to slow warming, but we’re blowing it. Methane emissions continue to climb with “no foreseeable slowdown,” a new study in the journal Nature finds.
We can’t change this trajectory unless we stop drilling for oil and gas. “Overall emissions will remain high as long as the industry is drilling new wells…That’s just the nature of the beast,” a petroleum expert told ProPublica this month, as it reported on how permits for Texas wells to vent and flare their natural gas (i.e., methane) are rubber stamped, with 99.6% approved. In fact, in Texas and some other states, oil well methane emissions are so normalized that some permits are issued automatically, without applications.
The industry literally can’t exist without pollution, because oil and gas operations must release methane and other pollutants to regulate equipment pressures, which is why they routinely get air pollution permits. The problem is much bigger than accidental leaks. In a 2022 report, the industry itself admitted only 6% of its methane emissions were leaks, the rest were intentional releases.
The Permian Basin in Texas alone emits more than 256,000 kilograms of methane per hour (about 2.2 million metric tons a year) the climate equivalent of 161 natural gas-fired power plants. And even in purportedly low-emitting oilfields, we know emissions are grossly underestimated.
So as leaders gather at Climate Week NYC to discuss solutions, they should start there: methane emissions are required for oil and gas production, “clean” natural gas is a scam, so to stop methane emissions we must stop drilling new wells.
We already agree on the need to stop methane. I was at the 2021 COP26 climate summit in Glasgow when the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030 was launched. So far 159 countries including the United States have signed it. But as I said then, “A pledge is not a plan.” Today, roughly halfway to the 2030 deadline, global methane emissions are up, not down, by some 40 million tons, largely from growing energy sector emissions — the equivalent of building 296 new coal-fired powerplants.
Meanwhile, oil and gas executives advertise flashy new emissions controls and misleading performance metrics to justify more production, even as methane emissions rise. They’re making a false argument that increasing methane production and exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) worldwide will somehow help meet Global Methane Pledge goals.
Their playbook is to ignore lifecycle emissions, cherry pick certain examples, and peddle the notion that natural gas can be “clean,” even though natural gas is methane and venting and flaring it is endemic.
But LNG is not “clean;” studies show it is 33% worse for the climate than coal. Leading environmental scientist Bob Howarth calls LNG “the worst of any fossil fuel.” Besides the methane emissions required in all natural gas production and transmission, LNG involves liquifying the gas, transporting it on boats, then more processing to make it usable in the destination countries, all of which causes massive additional emissions.
But we can still reverse the trend and bring methane levels down. Since it has a short lifespan in the atmosphere, the International Energy Agency points out that “sharp cuts in methane can deliver a net cooling effect within a relatively short period,” giving us time to “pursue lasting reductions in carbon dioxide.”
Although the Global Methane Pledge hasn’t delivered actual methane reductions yet, the IEA’s fundamental logic is correct. Methane still offers a tremendous opportunity to make climate progress, provided we make tremendous progress on actually cutting methane emissions. But accomplishing this will take more than non-binding pledges and fossil fuel industry spin. It will take putting a stop to oil and gas expansion.
No amount of emissions gadgets or performance certifications can fix an industry that must pollute to exist. Once we admit that, we can finally move from pledges to actual plans, and from methane-intensive energy to renewables.
Wilson is the director of the NGO Oilfield Witness.
