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Bay Journal: Satellites, Drones, Special Cameras Join The Fight Against Methane/VOC Pollution From Oil/Gas Wells, Petrochemical Plants, Landfills, Coal Mines In Pennsylvania

By Ad Crable, Chesapeake Bay Journal

In the summer of 2021, a twin-engine special research aircraft took off from State College, PA. Over three weeks, the plane flew 10,000–28,000 feet over oil and gas wells, landfills and coal mines in four regions of the state. [Read more here]

The mission was to pinpoint sources of high levels of methane gas, or “super emitters,” for the nonprofit group Carbon Mapper and its funding partner, U.S. Climate Alliance.

From a hole cut in the belly of the plane, they trained a camera-like device developed by NASA — an imaging spectrometer — that uses light wavelengths to pick up escaping plumes of methane.

Methane emissions are the second-largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide, and controlling them is increasingly considered a key to arresting climate change.

Methane is invisible to the naked eye. But spectrometers, and devices like them, detect and measure the infrared energy of objects. The cameras then convert that data into a three-dimensional electronic image.

For the 2021 aerial probe, Carbon Mapper targeted areas of generally high methane levels that the organization had previously located using readings from space satellites operated by the European Space Agency.

During the flights, the researchers found 63 super emitters. Most, they concluded, were the results of leaks and malfunctioning equipment.

Voluntary Reductions

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, which collaborated in the project, was thrilled by the reactions they received when they took the results to the sources of the highest emissions.

The operators of six landfills and six oil and gas wells responded by voluntarily fixing equipment or taking other steps to reduce emissions.

“That’s a really positive thing. This is existential proof that making methane visible can lead to voluntary action,” said Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper CEO and founder.

New Tools To Detect Air Pollution

In Pennsylvania, the use of this and other technology has energized a new breed of environmental activism aimed at detecting air pollution from the sky and from the ground.

Their tools include satellites, airplanes with specially equipped air monitors and ground-based remote-sensing cameras like those used by government regulators and gas operators to find leaks.

Sometimes, communities and groups use these devices to document problems. They also use them to document air quality before gas wells or petrochemical plants are built.

“It’s not our parents’ or grandparents’ environmentalism. It’s definitely not just sitting in trees. It’s a different type of environmentalism and it’s much more sophisticated,” said Justin Wasser of Earthworks, a national environmental group that helps communities fight oil, gas and mining pollution.

Methane Monitoring Satellites

Later this year and in early 2024, Carbon Mapper and its partners, which include NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planet Labs, plan to launch two satellites to monitor methane emissions around the world.

The first phase of the monitoring program has a $100 million budget, all funded by philanthropy.

Also early next year, a satellite dubbed MethaneSAT, funded by such high-profile financial backers as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, is scheduled to begin orbiting the Earth to monitor methane emissions.

“Methane satellites are going to dramatically change this work. This time next year, you and I are going to be talking about how astronomically large this problem is and why we haven’t been working on this for years,” Earthwork’s Wasser said.

Drones

Since 2020, the Pennsylvania-based group, FracTracker Alliance, has used ground monitors in southwestern Pennsylvania to document the cumulative effect of air pollution from fracking wells and petrochemical plants.

Now, armed with a $495,000 federal grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the group has purchased a drone that will carry infrared cameras over wells and gas-related petrochemical plants, looking for methane releases as well as smog-forming chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

The grant is part of a new federal initiative to enhance air quality monitoring in communities across the U.S.

“This kind of camera never seemed possible before. It seemed like a wish list,” said Ted Auch, FracTracker’s primary drone operator. “We’ll be deploying drones in a lot of hard-to-reach spots like up a hill, in a hollow, around a corner. We can pinpoint smokestacks.”

The group hopes that the data it yields will bolster the group’s stance that new gas well permits should be granted only after considering an area’s cumulative air quality, executive director Shannon Smith said.

Infrared Cameras

Christina Digiulio, a retired analytical chemist now working for the Pennsylvania chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, gets busy when she fields a health complaint from a resident living near a gas well, gas-based petrochemical plant or a landfill that’s accepting fracked-gas waste.

A certified thermographer, she lugs a $100,000 gas-imaging forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera to a gas well pad or the fence line of an industrial plant to look for plumes of methane and volatile organic compounds.

“We are using technology now that the industries have kept to themselves. We are an extension of our own regulatory agencies,” she said.

Sharing Findings

Environmental groups that share findings from their high-tech devices with regulators and gas operators report mixed results.

After the 2021 flights departing from State College, Carbon Mapper found that 60% of the methane releases documented were coming from vents in active and old underground coal mines — more than from oil and gas sources combined.

Although venting is allowed to prevent the buildup of gases for safety reasons, regulators and researchers alike were surprised at the volume.

But the coal industry did not cooperate in measuring emissions from the mines and threatened criminal trespass charges for flying over them, DEP’s Sean Nolan told the agency’s Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee. [Read more here]

Abandoned Oil/Gas Wells

For the past two years, Melissa Ostroff, a thermographer for Earthworks, has roamed Pennsylvania with a handheld FLIR camera looking for fugitive methane and other invisible pollutants leaking from hundreds of active and abandoned oil and gas well sites as part of the group’s Community Empowerment Project.

Of 52 instances of methane leaks she has reported to DEP, the agency sent someone to inspect the sites 31 times. Often, she said, equipment malfunctions causing the emissions were fixed.

In one of her most visible investigations, Ostroff found a gas well leaking methane gas in a popular park in Allegheny County. She reported the pollution to both the gas company and DEP.

Within days, the leak was repaired with new equipment installed.

Digiulio once detected emissions coming from a compressor station on a liquid natural gas pipeline being built in the eastern part of the state. She notified her state senator, who determined that the company did not have a permit for releases. Work stopped until a permit was obtained.

But some environmental groups said that their reports to regulators of unauthorized pollution go unchecked or that operators are allowed to fix problems without being cited for violations.

Shell Petrochemical Plant

On May 11, the Environmental Integrity Project and Clean Air Council filed a federal lawsuit to halt illegal releases of pollutants from a massive Shell plant using natural gas to produce plastics near Pittsburgh. [Read more here.]

The groups cite unpermitted releases of pollutants recorded, in part, by high-tech air monitors that Shell agreed to install as part of a previous settlement agreement.

Citizen Science Support

The increased use of citizen science is getting support from the federal government.

Under the EPA’s proposed new nationwide rules to regulate methane gas, oil and gas drillers would be required to act on potential leaks at super emitter sites found by third parties, such as environmental nonprofits, universities and others.

In a separate initiative, the EPA has announced $53 million in grants in 37 states, including the Chesapeake Bay states of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, New York and West Virginia, to fund grassroots monitoring efforts in communities.

The money will help pay for the purchase and deployment of various devices communities can use to detect air pollution, emissions and possible causes of health problems.

Pennsylvania will receive 11 grants under the program, with four supporting work by the Environmental Health Project to analyze air quality data as well as helping communities to understand it.

A grant to the Maryland Department of the Environment will help reduce air pollution found by sensors in three environmental justice communities, and Virginia will receive two grants to enable the Upper Mattaponi Indian Tribe to set up an air quality program in their community.

The aid for monitoring “will finally give communities, some who for years have been overburdened by polluted air and other environmental insults, the data and information needed to better understand their local air quality and have a voice for real change,” said Adam Ortiz, EPA administrator for Mid-Atlantic region.

Though thrilled to access equipment that can help amass hard evidence of pollution, some environmental groups are wary that they may have an increased role in protecting public health when it is the responsibility of government agencies to do just that.

“The data does not have the weight of EPA’s Clean Air Act’s requirements,” said Nathan Deron, the environmental data scientist for the Environmental Health Project. “At the end of the day, it’s up to DEP and other state regulators to listen to communities and act on the data that is being gathered.”

“We have more advanced technology. The gas industry does, too. But that, in itself, is not enough to influence policy if the political will isn’t there,” FracTracker’s Smith added. “We want to influence regulators to put in more protections.”

(Photos: top- Shale Gas Well, Coal Mine Methane Leaks; Compressor Station Leaks; bottom- conventional gas well leak; abandoned conventional gas well monitoring.)

(Reprinted from Chesapeake Bay Journal.)

NewsClip:

-- Bloomberg: A Cheap Fix To Global Warming is Finally Gaining Support - Reducing Methane Emissions From Coal Mines and Oil/Gas Operations

Related Articles:

-- DEP Methane Overflight Research Study Resulted In Voluntary Reductions In Oil & Gas, Landfill Facilities; Coal Industry Uncooperative [PaEN]

-- Earthworks Submits Video Evidence To DEP Of More Air Pollution Violations By Gas Flares At Shell Petrochemical Plant In Beaver County [PaEN]

-- FracTracker Alliance Seeking Information On Use Of Drones For Environmental Monitoring Work; Feb. 3 Online Meeting Set On Oil & Gas Facility Monitoring Project [PaEN]

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