Slow-motion methane disaster

Posted by Jeff on Dec 20, 2015 @ 4:10 am in Conservation | 0 comments | Last modified: December 18, 2015

In the hills above suburban Los Angeles, a man-made natural disaster of sorts has been unfolding for nearly two months. One can’t see it or hear it, and it’s not leaving a trail of dead animals and plants in its wake. It’s potentially catastrophic, nonetheless.

On October 23, 2015 workers at the massive Aliso Canyon subterranean natural gas storage facility north of the L.A. suburb of Porter Ranch, CA noticed that one of their old wells was leaking. When the usual fixes didn’t take, the workers surmised that the leak must be originating far underground, near the natural gas reservoir, itself. And fixing that would be a long, drawn out challenge. Two months has gone by, and the leak is still leaking. Big time.

And since it began, the leak has been emitting methane at a rate ranging from 36,000 to 58,000 kilograms per hour, according to the California Air Resources Board. That adds up to a total of some 62,000 metric tons of methane emitted as of Dec. 16 — about four times what had been lost nationwide in natural gas transmission pipeline “incidents” all year. And the number keeps growing.

Not long after the disaster began, residents of Porter Ranch were able to smell the rotten-egg odor of the mercaptons, which are added to natural gas in order to make it detectable. The additives caused some folks to suffer from burning eyes, nausea, headaches and other health issues, forcing dozens to leave their homes.

The long-term impacts might be even more serious. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane, which is about 87 times more potent in terms of global warming than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period.

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