Researchers identified more than 1,800 methane leaks between 2019 and 2020 around the world, of which 1,200 attributed to oil and gas exploitation.
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So far, scientists were only aware of a handful of major gas leaks occurring on hydrocarbon installations, two or three a year at most. A Study published Thursday 3 February in Science Reveals a different reality, much more worrying: more than 1,800 massive methane leaks took place in two years (2019 and 2020) in the world, of which 1,200 were attributed to oil and gas. The impact of these plumes is considerable for the climate. It is comparable to the circulation of 20 million vehicles for one year, all the emissions of the air sector or to the carbon discharges of Australia since 2005.
“The industry claimed that these events were exceptional. We were very surprised to discover that these leaks were held every day, between 50 and 150 times a month on average, releasing gigantic quantities of methane, around 25 Tons per hour “, reacts Thomas Lauval, the first author of the study and researcher at the climate and environmental science laboratory.
A climate bomb because methane, second greenhouse gases in terms of abundance in the atmosphere, behind carbon dioxide, has a much higher warming potential than that of CO 2 : 82 times more on a twenty year horizon, 29 times over a hundred years. Methane is responsible for a quarter of global warming since the pre-industrial era and its emissions have risen sharply in recent years. More than 60% of them come from human activities, mainly fossil fuels, agriculture and waste.
“Intentional leaks”
To track down and quantify the main leaks of methane, which she calls the “super emitters” or “ultra-transmitters”, the international research team associated with the French company Kayrros, data specialist Satellite for energy and the environment. Together, they analyzed thousands of images produced daily for two years by the European Sentinel-5P satellite. “It is precisely seen what are the sources of methane, and this follow-up is much more exhaustive and systematic than that which has so far been done with the help of aircraft, which were flying only twice a quarter”, Precise Alexandre d’Aspremont, co-founder and scientific director of Kayrros.
“We realized that the majority of these leaks are not accidents but intentional”, warns Thomas Lauval. Scientists have observed that many leaks were detected on a single day, then stopped. “These are maintenance operations: the manufacturers open for example a pipeline to drain and let methane escape instead of recovering it or the torch [burn], which would transform it into CO 2 , a lesser evil, “says the scientist. These emissions, by the majority, are not listed in the official inventories of countries since they are not reported by the operators.
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