A study by a team of researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory has found that methane emissions from oil and natural gas production in the United States may not be rising as quickly as had been feared.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas emitted during the natural gas production cycle; the nearly 50% increase in natural gas production from 2006 to 2015 has led to concerns that emissions have risen pari passu. The NOAA team found that this is not the case and that, in fact, total methane emissions have remained essentially constant over that period.
They suggest that the overestimates of some recent studies are a function of a decreasing ratio of methane to ethane emissions. Their paper is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. . . .