Methane emissions are notoriously hard to track because they are intermittent. PERSISTENT, NOT JUST INTERMITTENT EMISSIONS "If carbon dioxide is the fossil-fuel broiler of our heating planet, methane is a blowtorch.” “Methane is a super pollutant," said Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. That leaves it up to oil and gas producers - in some cases the very companies who have been fighting regulations - to cut methane emissions on their own. Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency have largely failed to regulate the invisible gas. Methane’s earth-warming power is some 83 times stronger over 20 years than the carbon dioxide that comes from car tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. The year 2021 saw the worst single increase ever. There's now nearly three times as much methane in the air than there was before industrial times. The methane released by these companies will be disrupting the climate for decades, contributing to more heat waves, hurricanes, wildfires and floods. Just 10 companies owned at least 164 of those sites, according to an AP analysis of Carbon Mapper’s data. The Associated Press took the coordinates of the 533 “super-emitting” sites and cross-referenced them with state drilling permits, air quality permits, pipeline maps, land records and other public documents to piece together the corporations most likely responsible. It’s not just month to month or season to season,” said Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona who leads Carbon Mapper.Ĭarbon Mapper identified the spewing sites only by their GPS coordinates. “We see the same sites active from year to year. Hundreds of those sites were seen spewing the gas over and over again. The group documented massive amounts of methane venting into the atmosphere from oil and gas operations across the Permian, a 250-mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border that a billion years ago was the bottom of a shallow sea. And it was only one of 533 methane “super emitters” detected during a 2021 aerial survey of the Permian conducted by Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Asked if she believed in climate change, Stansel responded: “I believe in God.” David Goldman/AP Show More Show Lessīut Mako’s outsized emissions aren’t illegal, or even regulated. “Can you imagine anyone in here driving an electric car?” asked Brenda Stansel, the owner, who insisted Trump was still the rightful commander-in-chief. At the burger and barbecue restaurant the parking lot was filled at lunchtime with gas-guzzling American-made pickup trucks. David Goldman/AP Show More Show Less 20 of30 Cowboy hats hang on a deer head next to a portrait of John Wayne at Big John’s Feed Lot in Big Spring, Texas, Friday, Oct. “We never really know where we go next,” said Yperman who is expecting their second child in March. Spots in the 291 space RV park go for $780 a month, $1,200 for a small one-room cabin.
They have been living in their RV they’ve named Freya for about a year and move around as his job dictates. Yperman’s husband is an engineer with a construction contractor widening the highway into Kermit, a sleepy desert crossroads that has seen its population grow with the oil boom. 18 of30 19 of30 Tristan Yperman, 37, holds her son, Grant, 1, in the makeshift yard outside their RV at the Ocean Front RV Resort in Kermit, Texas, Oct.
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