Making Visible the Globe-warming Gases of the Permian Fracking Boom

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There is an LED sign at a Chase Bank in downtown Midland, Texas, the heart of the Permian Basin, which quantifies the current oil boom. It alternates between current rig count, the price of oil, and the price of gasoline. On October 30, the day I arrived, the sign informed me there were 1,068 drilling rigs across the United States, of which 489 โ€” nearly half โ€” are in the Permianย Basin.

Though the flashing sign is meant to celebrate the fracking boom, Sharon Wilson, Texas coordinator of Earthworks, sees it as a warning sign of the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climateย change.

LED sign counting the number of oil rigs in the US and Permian Basin
LED sign counting rigs in the U.S. and Permian Basin in downtown Midland,ย Texas.

The Permian Basin is one of the most prolific oil and natural gas basins in the U.S. Roughly 250 miles wide and 300 miles long, it spans West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. The approximately 86,000-square-mile area encompasses several sub-basins, including the Delaware Basin, Central Basin, and the Midland Basin, all of which are in the midst of the latest oilย boom.

Wilson, an outspoken anti-fracking activist, has advocated for better regulations to rein in the fracking industry, which utilizes horizontal drilling and fluid injections to crack open shale to release oil and gas trapped inside. But she no longer believes regulations are the answer because state and federal governments arenโ€™t prepared to enforce them. โ€œThe only way to save the planet from climate change is to stop fracking now,โ€ she toldย me.

The frenzied expansion of the oil and gas industry in the Permian Basin over the last two years is like nothing Wilson has ever seen. Infrastructure tied to the fracking industry โ€” from well pads and waste disposal plants to pipelines and energy transfer sites โ€” is being built faster than ever. Wilson has found some sites operating before posting signs identifying who owns and operates them, which is illegal and makes filing potential air pollution complaintsย difficult.

Child's bicycle near a fracking site in Midland, Texas
Frack site near homes in Midland,ย Texas.

Pipeline construction site in Permian Basin
Pipeline construction site in the Permianย Basin.

โ€œStopping climate change is the most important issue of our time,โ€ Wilson said,ย โ€œbut not enough people get methane’s role. We are on a path to planetary suicide, and what is going on in the Permian Basin proves that.โ€ Driven by this belief, Earthworks has been spending time and resources trying to bring light to the regionโ€™s methaneย problem.

โ€œIf we stop methane emissions, the planet will have an immediate response,โ€ she points out. To do that, Earthworks says fracking, which has helped unleash a glut of natural gas and oil drilling in the U.S., must stop rightย away.

Methane, the main component in natural gas, is a greenhouse gas that is up to 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after entering the atmosphere. A study organized by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and published in June this year reports that the U.S. oil and gas supply chain is leaking roughly 60 percent more methane than previous Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, which largely relied on industryย self-reports.

Four drilling rigs off the highway in Midland, Texas
Four drilling rigs off Interstate 20, West of Midland, Texas, in the Permianย Basin.

Cryogenic air separation plant under construction in the Permian Basin
A cryogenic air separation plant, which can be used to process raw natural gas and in oil and gas recovery,ย under construction in the Permianย Basin.

Methane and a Warmingย Planet

The UNโ€™s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report in October stressing the urgency of lowering globe-warming emissions. Known as the 1.5ยฐC report, the IPCCโ€™s projections give humankind 12 years to reduce emissions enough to limit climate changeย catastrophe.

It concludes that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have already pushed average global temperatures up by 1ยฐC (1.8ยฐF) since the second half of the 19th century, and that urgent changes are needed to keep warming limited to 1.5ยฐC total in order to reduce the risk of extreme heat, drought, floods, andย poverty.

The IPCCโ€™s predictions show that even if the Paris Agreementโ€™s current pledges are met, emissions are not being cut fast enough to keep global temperatures from rising another half degree Celsius by 2100, according to the group Climate Analytics.

The EPAโ€™s latest annual Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, also released in October, confirms that methane emissions are not going down quickly enough. The report provides a snapshot of large emitters, indicates 2017 oil and gas methane emissions, and shows emission trajectories across the country that are on theย rise.

According to the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group pushing for more stringent air pollution regulations: โ€œA look at those trends shows we are not cutting oil and gas methane emissions nearly fast enough to help avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climateย change.โ€

Fracking industry truck passes a mural of Texas
Mural of Texas with truck used by fracking industry in Pecos,ย Texas.

The EDFโ€™s own study on methane emissions released earlier this year gives a more comprehensive account of methane releases than the EPAโ€™sย report.

Though both call for further cuts to methane emissions, the Trump administration is moving in the opposite direction, first, by announcing the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Agreement, and then rolling back the EPAโ€™s first-ever national rule, enacted in 2016, to directly limit methane emissions from oil and gasย operations.

In the Belly of theย Basin

Wilson is encouraging journalists to come see how widespread emissions of methane and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are at oil and gas sites in the Permian Basin. On October 31, I met up with her and Alan Septoff, Earthworksโ€™ strategic communications director, during one of their air monitoring trips in Pecos, Texas, a city in the southwest region of the Permianย Basin.

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We stopped at oil and gas industry sites where Wilson had previously documented methane emissions with an optical gas imaging camera, which makes otherwise invisible emissions visible. And though the infrared camera does not specify or quantify the gases being emitted, Wilson said, โ€œIf itโ€™s coming out of oil and gas facilities, it is natural gas, which isย methane.โ€

โ€œThere are hitchhiker gases or VOCs that come with the methane too,โ€ she added, explaining that identifying which compounds are present would require more precise airย monitoring.

And while each fracking industry site is permitted to emit certain amounts of gases at various stages of production, Wilson can often identify clear violations, and when she does, she submits a complaint to theย state.

We also stopped at other sites where the smell of rotting eggs, a sign of the hazardous gas hydrogen sulfide, suggested more leaks were likely to beย found.

The optical gas imaging camera made it easy to see dense plumes of emissionsย coming out of tanks and hatches that, Wilson explained, often could be contained if industry used available methane emissions control technology. But such devices are not required and are hardly theย norm.

We drove for miles with the smell of rotten eggs permeating the car. At some of the sites, the smell was so strong I became queasy. Methane is colorless and odorless, but if powerful-smelling hydrogen sulfide is leaking from drilling sites, methane likely is asย well.

โ€œWe are out here recording methane emissions because no one else is doing it,โ€ Wilson said. โ€œThe Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) only monitors emissions in isolated cases, usually when we file regulatory complaints and push them to do it. So we are out here because the government isn’t doing itsย job.โ€

Andrea Morrow, TCEQโ€™s media relations manager, begs to differ. She told me during a call that the agency monitors emissions in numerous ways: โ€œIf we see something that is amiss on a fixed monitor, we check it out.โ€ However, the agency has only four air monitors in the producing areas of the Texas Permian, despite the vast area, leaving some oil and gas sites well over 100 miles away from the nearest monitor.

She added: โ€œIf we get complaints, that would be another driver,โ€ and noted that the agency performs both regular and unannounced inspections at oil and gasย sites.

Morrow couldnโ€™t quantify how many unannounced inspections were done in the Permian Basin this year. The way the agency keeps records doesnโ€™t work like that, she explained, but offered me a link to TCEQโ€™s Annual Enforcement Reports and the agencyโ€™s Air Monitoring Data page.

Wilson acknowledges that TCEQ follows up on some of the complaints Earthworks files. โ€œSome of the complaints have led to sites being shut down temporarily until a problem is fixed. Though in most instances after one part is fixed, another will fail and the leaks are endless,โ€ sheย said.

Alan Septoff photographing a fracking industry site in the Permian Basin.
Alan Septoff photographing a fracking industry site in the Permianย Basin.

Hydrogen sulphide warning sign at a fracking site in the Permian Basin
Signs warning of various hazards, including hydrogen sulfide gas,ย at a fracking site in the Permianย Basin.

So-called โ€˜Bridgeย Fuelโ€™

โ€œOne way not to quantify a problem is not to monitor it,โ€ Septoff said. He thinks the lack of urgency toward reducing methane emissions is due, in part, to so few people understanding how much methane the fracking industry releases and its contribution to climateย change.

โ€œPresident Obama did a disservice by selling the notion that natural gas is a bridge fuel,โ€ Septoff pointed out. The same misguided idea was embraced by Carl Pope, the former executive director of the Sierra Club. Although the Sierra Club no longer touts natural gas as a form of โ€œclean energy,โ€ the misleading narrative is still touted by industry representatives and politicians on both sides of the aisle in states where the fracking industryย operates.

Cornell University Professor Emeritus Dr. Anthony Ingraffea and his colleagues have published studies showing that because so much methane is released as natural gas is drilled and delivered to market, the fossil fuel billed as a โ€œbridge fuelโ€ may be as harmful to the climate, if not more so, thanย coal.

Ingraffeaโ€™s work also has outlined the role U.S. fracking plays in changing the worldโ€™s climate. In a lecture entitled โ€œShale Gas: The Technological Gamble That Should Not Have Been Taken,โ€ Ingraffea explains that initial studies about climate change didnโ€™t factor in the strong warming power of methane emissions. โ€œThe most recent climate data suggests that the world is on track to cross the two degrees of warming threshold set in the Paris Accord in just 10 to 15 years,โ€ he said in his lecture, released Aprilย 4.

While the EPA has removed a lot of information about climate change from its website, NASA still offers plenty. A 2016 post about climate change by NASAโ€™s Jet Propulsion Laboratoryย warns:

โ€œAn average global temperature increase of 2ยฐ Celsius (3.6ยฐ Fahrenheit) will bring catastrophic changes โ€” even as compared against a change of 1.5ยฐ C (2.7ยฐ F). Heat waves would last around a third longer, rain storms would be about a third more intense, the increase in sea level would be approximately that much higher, and the percentage of tropical coral reefs at risk of severe degradation would be roughly that muchย greater.โ€

Sharon Wilson driving around the Permian Basin with her FLIR camera documenting pollution at oil and gas sites.
Sharon Wilson in the Permian Basin documenting emissions at oil and gas industryย sites.

Wilson and Septoff believe the fastest, most dramatic way to slow the warming of the planet is to stop all fracking now. The Permianโ€™s fracking boom, combined with the 2015 lifting of the crude oil export ban, is driving record-breaking exports of oil from the U.S.

โ€œIf we stop emitting methane, it will immensely slow the warming of the planet,โ€ Wilson said while we drove through a landscape full of flares burning off methane at countless oil and gas sites, โ€œBut we are doing the opposite. Instead of moving towards renewable energy, we are fracking oil and gas forย export.โ€

Donate here to support DeSmogย investigations like thisย one

Main image: Sharon Wilson, Texas coordinator of Earthworks, with an optical gas imaging FLIR camera in the Permian Basin. Credit: All photos by Julie Dermansky forย DeSmog

Julie-Dermansky-022
Julie Dermansky is a multimedia reporter and artist based in New Orleans. She is an affiliate scholar at Rutgers Universityโ€™s Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights. Visit her website at www.jsdart.com.

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