Oil and gas producers rely on flaring to limit the venting of natural gas from their facilities, but new research led by the University of Michigan shows that in the real world, this practice is far less effective than estimated—releasing five times more methane in the U.S. than previously thought.
Oil and gas producers rely on flaring to limit the venting of natural gas from their facilities, but new research led by the University of Michigan shows that in the real world, this practice is far less effective than estimated—releasing five times more methane in the U.S. than previously thought.
Methane is known to be a powerful greenhouse gas, but burning it off at oil and gas wells was believed to effectively keep it from escaping into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, data published in the journal Science shows we overestimate flaring’s effectiveness and, as a result, underestimate its contribution to methane emissions and climate change. But if we fix flaring issues, the payoff is huge: the equivalent of removing 3 million cars from the roads.
Read more at: University of Michigan
Multiple flares observed in operation in the Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin in North Dakota, 2021. (Photo Credit: Alan Gorchov Negron, University of Michigan and Yulia Chen of Stanford University)
