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50,000 Kilograms of Methane Per Hour Gush From a Busted Pipe
Infrared
footage shows what an L.A. community has been living for nearly two
months.
What does a pipe
spewing 50,000 kilograms of methane per hour look like? You’d
never know, as the highly flammable gas is invisible to the naked
eye.But in the northern San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where a
ruptured pipe has been pluming natural gas for nearly
two months,
residents finally have their chance to see.
The video was
captured by the environmental nonprofit Earthworks, whose
staffers took infrared cameras to the hills outside the natural gas
storage field where the broken line sits. Owned by the Southern
California Gas Company, the field is about a mile away from homes in
the 30,000-person community of Porter Ranch. Since the break was
first reported on October 23, residents have endured nausea,
headaches and nosebleeds from chemicals added to the gas to
give it a smell.
The utility has unable
to repair the pipe, and has said it
will be months before
it’s fixed. State air quality regulators recently
estimated that
the rupture is releasing about 50,000 kilograms of methane per hour.
Hundreds of Porter Ranch
families have been relocated to hotels by the gas company, and about
2,000 more are seeking such accommodations. Public health
officials say that
methane itself is not too risky in the short term, given that
it’s rising into the atmosphere. But the longer the leak
lasts, the greater the risk to humans becomes, as there are
trace amounts of more harmful gases mixed in with the methane.
The city attorney of Los
Angeles announced Monday that he was suing the gas company over how
they’ve handled the leak. Porter Ranch residents have also served
the utility with a class action lawsuit, which the video was made to
support, according to KPCC.
Call
it the invisible spill.
You can’t see it,
but it’s there -- a steady stream of natural gas seeping out of the
pipe casing in a well in Southern California that may spew as much
greenhouse gas into the air as a half-million cars do in a year.
Pipeline operator Sempra Energy says it may take three to four months
to plug.Using the same tactic that eventually ended the giant 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company is boring a well that’ll intercept the damaged one to stop the seepage. Meanwhile, it’s moving hundreds of people into temporary housing and faces as much as $900 million in costs including relocation and legal expenses, based on Bloomberg Intelligence and government data estimates. The 8,700-foot-deep (2,650-meter) well has leaked 800,000 metric tons of gases contributing to global warming over the first month, about a quarter of California emissions by state estimates over the same period.
“You have this huge volcano of methane pollution and except for the fact that a lot of people are getting sick, it hasn’t engendered a lot of attention,” said Tim O’Connor, California oil and gas director for the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. “When you think about an oil spill, you have birds and fish that are damaged. Here you have future generations, children and people across the world that are feeling the effects.”
Spill Costs
The $900 million cost estimate is based on a worst-case scenario that assumes maximum injuries and includes relocation, response, litigation and the loss of natural gas expenses, according to the analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Brandon Barnes and data from state officials. It doesn’t include potential fines and penalties.Javier Mendoza, a spokesman for Sempra’s Southern California Gas Co. utility, said the company has “no idea how an estimate of that amount could be reached.”
“It is much too early to speculate on any financial implications from the situation at the Aliso Canyon facility,” he said by e-mail. “We will not be speculating on ‘what if’ scenarios.” The company has insurance for its storage business, he said.
Sempra fell as much as 4.7 percent on Monday. Shares were down 2.7% to $95.00 at the close in New York.
Much as with the crude spill from BP Plc’s Macondo well five years ago, regulators have struggled to get a handle on the magnitude of the leak blowing gas into the Porter Ranch neighborhood. Sempra won’t be able to tell how much gas has escaped until the flow’s been stopped, Mendoza said.
Sempra and its Southern California Gas Co. unit face at least two lawsuits by Porter Ranch residents who claim to have been sickened by the leaked gas. The city of Los Angeles filed suit against Southern California Gas over the incident, according to an e-mail statement Monday from city attorney Mike Feuer.
"The only environmental effect is the additional greenhouse gas," said George Hirasaki, a Rice University engineering professor and former Shell Oil Co. official who was involved in the response to an oil spill off Louisiana’s coast in the early 1970’s. “But it is not going to dirty the environment the way an oil spill would.”
Rapid Expansion
The incident highlights the risks associated with the rapid transformation of America’s natural gas pipeline network. Cheap supplies surging out of shale formations in the past decade are altering pipe flows and increasing the country’s dependence on the heating and power-plant fuel.Workers for Southern California Gas discovered the leak on Oct. 23 at a well in the mountainous Aliso Canyon storage field, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles. Efforts to stop the flow of gas by pumping fluids straight into the well have failed. The utility started drilling the intercepting well on Dec. 4, the company said in a statement on Monday. The utility continues to withdraw gas from the storage facility to serve customers, the statement said.
Southern California Gas CEO Dennis Arriola has apologized and said in a letter to Porter Ranch residents that the gas utility is doing everything it can to fix the leak.
The county health department said those exposed to it may experience short-term symptoms including nausea, coughing and headaches.
Southern California Gas is trying to determine the best way to cap emissions from the site, the utility said in its statement.
60,000 kilograms
As much as 60,000 kilograms of natural gas an hour has been leaking, according to David Clegern, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, a state agency that regulates emissions. That translates to about 800,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas that has already seeped out of the well, he said.About $12.2 million worth of gas may be lost should it take Sempra three months to fix the leak, said James Williams, president of energy consultancy WTRG Economics, basing his estimates on the state data and natural gas prices last week. The leak hasn’t affected regional gas or power markets, said Chris DaCosta, a Boston-based analyst for energy data provider Genscape Inc.
A handful of state agencies are coordinating a joint response to the leak, said Don Drysdale, a spokesman for California’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources. There will probably be a third-party investigation once it’s plugged, he said.
"Right now,” Drysdale said, “the emphasis is on getting this thing fixed.”
Not sure what happened what happened here, but the link below was a dead end.
Texas Frack Zone is World's Biggest Methane Emitter
http://www.nofrackingway.us/2015/12/08/texas-frack-zone-is-worlds-biggest-methane-leaker/
Producing more climate cooking gases than all the coal burning plants in the US. Thanks frackers. TexasFracking Zone Emits 90% More Methane Than EPA ...
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