Methane Emissions from United States Natural Gas Gathering and Processing

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• 作者：Anthony J. Marchese ; Timothy L. Vaughn ; Daniel J. Zimmerle ; David M. Martinez ; Laurie L. Williams ; Allen L. Robinson ; Austin L. Mitchell ; R. Subramanian ; Daniel S. Tkacik ; Joseph R. Roscioli ; Scott C. Herndon
• 刊名：Environmental Science & Technology
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：September 1, 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：49
• 期：17
• 页码：10718-10727
• 全文大小：417K
• ISSN：1520-5851

文摘

New facility-level methane (CH₄) emissions measurements obtained from 114 natural gas gathering facilities and 16 processing plants in 13 U.S. states were combined with facility counts obtained from state and national databases in a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate CH₄ emissions from U.S. natural gas gathering and processing operations. Total annual CH₄ emissions of 2421 (+245/鈥?37) Gg were estimated for all U.S. gathering and processing operations, which represents a CH₄ loss rate of 0.47% (卤0.05%) when normalized by 2012 CH₄ production. Over 90% of those emissions were attributed to normal operation of gathering facilities (1697 +189/鈥?85 Gg) and processing plants (506 +55/-52 Gg), with the balance attributed to gathering pipelines and processing plant routine maintenance and upsets. The median CH₄ emissions estimate for processing plants is a factor of 1.7 lower than the 2012 EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHGI) estimate, with the difference due largely to fewer reciprocating compressors, and a factor of 3.0 higher than that reported under the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. Since gathering operations are currently embedded within the production segment of the EPA GHGI, direct comparison to our results is complicated. However, the study results suggest that CH₄ emissions from gathering are substantially higher than the current EPA GHGI estimate and are equivalent to 30% of the total net CH₄ emissions in the natural gas systems GHGI. Because CH₄ emissions from most gathering facilities are not reported under the current rule and not all source categories are reported for processing plants, the total CH₄ emissions from gathering and processing reported under the EPA GHGRP (180 Gg) represents only 14% of that tabulated in the EPA GHGI and 7% of that predicted from this study.