Ohio gas well blowout leaked more than many countries do in a year

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/ohio-gas-well-accident-last-year-released-surprising-amount-of-methane/

by erentz • 7 years ago

208 77 7 years ago

minikites3• 7 years ago

Incidents like this is why we're not going to save the planet with individual actions. I could spend my entire life eating vegan, recycling, and bicycling everywhere and that entire gain is dwarfed by one incident like this.

The only thing that will save us is decisive and collective action. Think about that when you think about your vote in the next election in your area.

I particularly like the suggestion in one of the comments on the original article:

I wonder if it would have taken 20 days to stop if they were being fined by the pound.

jacquesm2• 7 years ago

Yes, but without you doing all that it would be even worse.

minikites3• 7 years ago

Absolutely, I don't want my comment to be taken as an endorsement of "Well, there's nothing I can do so I might as well roll coal and dump my motor oil on the lawn."

It's important to do both, but saving the planet will only be accomplished through collective action.

jellicle• 7 years ago

No, it wouldn't. The commenter's actions make no difference at all on a global scale. Zero.

That's the point: understanding that individual virtue does absolutely, totally, precisely nothing. Only collective actions count. At all.

Understanding orders of magnitude is not something that comes easily to humans but it must be understood to work on large problems.

hanniabu3• 7 years ago

On a global scale the difference would be marginal. Nothing but a mere rounding error.

allan_s• 7 years ago

I save you the whole quote but :

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

it's easier to have this kind of thing voted in a "climate-change-aware" nation, which is easier to have if all your local government are climate-change-ware, which is easier to have if all your neighborhood are climate-change-aware, which is easier if all the familly in it are climate-change-aware which is easier if you are climate change aware.

and once your country, regardless of how small it is, is climate change aware, it's easier to make bigger, more polluting country, to change, as they can't hide anymore behind a "your first"

but yes I agree with you that you can't stop at your individual level, but it has to start there

cjdaly• 7 years ago

there are certain, specific individuals who could stop and it would make a huge difference. someone decided to punch this hole in the ground. someone directed the engineering. I’m glad this new Sentinel-5P sat is up. it’s hard to manage what’s not being measured.

noobermin• 7 years ago

While this accident is terrible, it pales in comparison to the US output of GHG's per year. The collective action that is needed will also call for individual action. You're right though that individual action alone is not enough.

Keverw2• 7 years ago

I guess this is related to fracking? I seen something before that Pennsylvania doesn't allow certain waste, so the companies put it in trucks and pay to put it in injection wells in Ohio by the barrel. Pretty sad Ohio accepts money to dump other states waste.

Looked it up to confirm about how waste from Pennsylvania gets dumped in Ohio:

https://environmentohiocenter.org/programs/ohc/ohio-fracking...

Even caused a earthquake in Youngstown, which isn't where you'd typically expect earthquakes. https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2018/10/12/fracking...

Then it gets into the water supply too. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ohio-communities-are-becoming-d...

Remember seeing a video once where someone could light the water coming out of their kitchen sink facet on fire. https://youtu.be/4LBjSXWQRV8

I don't know why state leadership allow this stuff to happen. Then you have the brain drain problem, Ohio is losing highly educated residents to other states with more opportunities, especially when it comes to tech. I feel like Ohio is moving backwards and not innovating. Maybe in Columbus or Cincinnati, things are better but still probably dwarfs in comparison to opportunities in Silicon Valley or Austin.

jtbayly• 7 years ago

That "confirmation" link in no way confirms that this leak was related in any way to fracking or dumping.

If I were to bet, it is unrelated. Methane and natural gas are not the waste products you would be pumping into an old well.

Keverw2• 7 years ago

Was talking in general about allowing dumping, but clarified my post.

ufmace• 7 years ago

Remember seeing a video once where someone could light the water coming out of their kitchen sink facet on fire.

Note that this happens more often completely naturally than as a result of any drilling operations. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep for more info.

Oil and gas in economically useful amounts is generally deeper underground below https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprock that prevents it from flowing upward. If that caprock was not there, then the oil would not have accumulated in that location in the first place. Oil wells generally have multiple layers of steel casing and cement between the wellbore and the shallow water table at the time. This is necessary to protect the integrity of the wellbore throughout the drilling process and to ensure that any produced oil goes to the surface collector, where it can be used, instead of leaking all over the place. It is also mandated by regulations in most jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, the same natural processes that cause oil and gas to be produced and migrate upwards happen in many locations. In some, there is caprock deep underground that causes them to accumulate in volumes that make sense to drill wells into. In other locations, they may naturally flow all the way to the surface, or flow into shallower underground water tables and end up in residential water supplies.

mywittyname• 7 years ago

I don't know why state leadership allow this stuff to happen.

Ohio is an incredibly "business friendly" state, Common Sense Initiatives are the euphemism now. There's almost no taxes on businesses, property tax abatement are handed out to developers like candy, yet the state still wants to fund massive highway projects and employ lots of government workers. Only so much of these costs can be pushed onto the workers, so they have to look for money in other places. Hence, turning the state a for profit garbage dump.

malingo• 7 years ago

In 2005 almost 14% of solid waste disposed in Ohio was from out of state [1]. I don't know how that compares to other states, but it seems like a lot. In the years since, I wouldn't be surprised if the number has increased.

Edit: sure enough, in 2017 the percentage of out-of-state waste has increased to 21.5% [2].

[1] https://epa.ohio.gov/portals/47/facts/2005_out_of_state_wast... (PDF)

[2] https://epa.ohio.gov/portals/34/document/guidance/gd_1008.pd... (PDF)

krupan• 7 years ago

Yet we don't use nuclear energy because of its "risks"

tstrimple8• 7 years ago

I believe that we don't use nuclear energy because it's not economically feasible in a private energy market. Startup costs and operation costs are very high compared to natural gas, solar and wind. We saw how energy companies plowed right through public outcry and resistance in the Dakota Access Pipeline. I think it's silly to assume they wouldn't do the same with nuclear power if they saw a profit in it. Even with federal subsidies and loan guarantees energy companies aren't biting.

Super_Jambo• 7 years ago

Would've been feasable if the CO2 industries actually had to pay for the externality of ruining the atmosphere though right?

api• 7 years ago

This is a point that needs to be made more often. People think nuclear isn't big because of greens, but greens almost always get beaten into the ground politically when they go up against the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuels are much more profitable than nuclear power.

vmchale2• 7 years ago

We saw how energy companies plowed right through public outcry and resistance in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

In the US it got blown into something completely different, about sticking it to the libs or whatnot. So we went ahead and did it because our president has the personality of a toddler.

jessant2• 7 years ago

Judging by this[1] graph, the federal government spends like 10x on renewable energy subsidies vs nuclear. Imagine how much more developed the nuclear power capabilities of the US would be if it received similar attention.

[1] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/09/23/energy-subsidies-re...

dv_dt3• 7 years ago

Nuclear is simply too expensive operate and too slow to build no mater who is providing the funding.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019/

imroot• 7 years ago

I grew up in Noble County, Ohio (next to Belmont County) and still get the weekly newspaper delivered to me via mail.

There were exactly zero write-ups of this in the local papers.

The Radio stations in the area are generally owned by one entity (AVC Communications), and there really isn't a lot on their website about it: not really surprising, because 25+ years ago they went Satellite Only and only someone in the news room from 6A-4P.

My biggest complaints about the Oil and Gas industry taking the SE Ohio area and turning it into a cash cow are two-fold: 1.) We're basically treating nature like a resource and stripping it all back to nothing (like AEP did in the 60's and 70's), and 2.) this has basically zero benefit to the locals: most of the jobs in the Oil and Gas industry are specialized and workers imported (leading to stories of welders making $140/hour in Ohio: just simply not true).

I could go on and on about growing up in the second poorest county in Ohio, but, I'll just leave it at this: not surprised that it happened but very surprised that nobody has really reported on this until now.

pstuart• 7 years ago

But to even question this in today's political world makes you a liberal agitator. I wish I knew how we could reframe these issues as "proper stewardship of our commons" vs. "but we need the jobs now!"

hanniabu3• 7 years ago

I wish I knew how we could reframe these issues as "proper stewardship of our commons" vs. "but we need the jobs now!"

You can't, because it's purposely framed that way. You think the ones starting that think they're actually bringing jobs back? Hell no, they just say it b/c I'm sure they're getting benefits and contributions from the oil/gas companies, and unfortunately much of the less educated people in these areas aren't the wiser.

I'm sure this is another reason for systemic neglect of the education system. Less educated people are easier to control and brainwash.

TazeTSchnitzel• 7 years ago

It's ironic that “liberal” means “left of centre” in US politics, because it's liberalism in the classical sense that is the ideology behind so much of the destruction of the commons.

vmchale2• 7 years ago

In American politics you don't even need to deliver on the jobs. You can just make some shit up and blame everybody's problems on something else (e.g. free trade, immigrants) and then whip up a frenzy and never deliver. But even after consistently never delivering you're still on the side of the people. Somehow.

electricslpnsld• 7 years ago

There were exactly zero write-ups of this in the local papers.

A few miles across the border it’s been all over the Pittsburgh news —- the mayor here has even been tweeting about it!

heymijo• 7 years ago

We're basically treating nature like a resource and stripping it all back to nothing (like AEP did in the 60's and 70's)

Go back further.

This [0] is a picture of what used to be a stream in Southeast Ohio. Coal mines shuttered 100 years ago are still leaking acid drainage into it.

Southeast Ohio is rife with acid mine drainage like this from coal mines active in the late 1800's and early 1900's. These negative externalities weren't priced in any more than those of AEP in the 60's and 70's or the natural gas industry today.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/NZWDQmg

manfredo3• 7 years ago

"Leaked more than many countries do in a year" is an interesting way of expressing the scale. Many countries have little to no petroleum industry.

Or, for another kind of context, the researchers point out that this Ohio well released more methane in 20 days than the oil and gas activities in most nations around Europe do in an entire year—save only the UK, Germany, and Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...

Most European countries other than Norway have orders of magnitude smaller petroleum industries than the US, and many have near zero production. While leaking oil and gas is bad, this kind of journalistic sleight of hand is neither necessary nor productive.

To better put this leak in perspective, the US alone apparently leaks 13 million tons of natural gas yearly [1], and 440 million tons are annually leaked world wide from both human and natural sources [2]. So this leak accounted for 0.5% of nation-wide gas leaking in a given year and 0.014% of global methane emissions in a given year.

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/oil-and-gas-facil...

2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/methane-siberia-c...

take_a_breath2• 7 years ago

==Most European countries other than Norway have orders of magnitude smaller petroleum industries than the US, and many have near zero production. While leaking oil and gas is bad, this kind of journalistic sleight of hand is neither necessary nor productive.==

Isn't your comment an equal slight of hand? The article isn't about total leaks in the US compared to other countries. This is about one specific gas leak in Ohio, which they compare to other countries.

manfredo3• 7 years ago

The point is, leaking any amount of oil is sufficient to exceed the petroleum leaks of many countries that have no petroleum production whatsoever.

Isn't your comment an equal slight of hand? The article isn't about total leaks in the US compared to other countries. This is about one specific gas leak in Ohio, which they compare to other countries

The comparison to other countries, many of which have little to no petroleum industry, is the sleight of hand I'm addressing.

Putting this leak in respect to the total amount of natural gas leakage in the country and the world is a straightforward was of representing the contribution of this leak to total natural gas leakage.

jxramos• 7 years ago

Not to mention the huge variance of population to the rest of the world. Many of the countries thought up for comparison pale in scale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populat...

RandomBacon2• 7 years ago

Sensationalist title, as Ohio is larger than many countries.

RandomBacon2• 7 years ago

I think the leak is bad, but we should be fair, even with things we don't like, right?

Ohio gas well blowout leaked more than many countries do in a year

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