The Massive U.S. Pipeline Buildout Is Mostly for Gas Going Overseas

Editor s Note This article originally appeared at Inside Conditions News a nonprofit independent news organization that covers situation strength and the climate It is republished with permission Sign up for their newsletter here More than three-quarters of new gas pipeline quota right now under enhancement in the U S would feed additional liquefied natural gas exports rather than supporting domestic strength requirements a new record concludes Greenhouse gas emissions tied to that new threshold would be far larger than the current weather impurity from all coal-fired power plants nationwide according to the statement published Monday by the Center for Strength Environmental Analysis CEEA is a not long ago formed think tank based in Arlington Virginia that focuses on power and environmental protocol The money flowing to gas pipeline infrastructure is not slowing and is intended to push US gas production even higher from its current record levels Jeremy Symons president of the CEEA and a former federal context procedures advisor reported in a written announcement This buildout will extend our dependency on natural gas for decades to come slowing the transition to cleaner more affordable alternatives Planned natural gas transmission pipelines would add billion cubic feet per day of additional limit a figure just below the total volume of U S natural gas production in according to the description The largest planned pipelines across the country and percent of total quota of advancing pipeline projects are intended to export gas overseas as LNG based on the authors assessment of federal facts and other population records The additional gas shipments would have critical implications for environment change If all of the pipelines are built and run at full quota carbon dioxide emissions from burning this additional gas would be two and half times greater than the CO presently published from all U S coal-fired power plants the review ascertained This doesn t include emissions of methane a environment super pollutant and the primary component of natural gas Methane emissions occur at every step of the natural gas supply chain from wellheads and pipelines to LNG vessels and end users as the gas leaks or is intentionally vented Methane emissions from the additional pipelines would pack a conditions punch nearly twice that of CO emissions from coal-fired power plants over a -year period according to the record The amount of gas leaks from the oil and gas sector will likely increase as the Trump administration rolls back the industry s methane regulations the summary noted We know from hundreds of thousands of aerial and satellite measurements that methane leaks from oil and gas production are far worse than we previously realized which makes the state footprint of natural gas as bad as coal in several regions of the country announced Danny Richter a senior fellow with CEEA and the assessment s lead author We had a clear path to clean up the methane complication including the methane emissions reduction campaign enacted by Congress in as well as EPA regulations for the oil and gas industry But that pathway has been shut down by the current administration A fee on excessive methane emissions from oil and gas producers implemented under the Biden administration was rescinded by the Trump administration on May It is clear from the beginning of this description that it was created with the outcome already determined and no desire to provide facts an EPA spokesperson notified Inside Context News U S methane emissions have been falling for decades thanks to American innovation not heavy-handed authorities regulations while domestic production of oil and gas has exponentially increased According to EPA methane emissions in the United States decreased by between and Measurements in the field have repeatedly shown that shared methane emissions far understate actual releases The American Petroleum Institute an oil and gas industry group did not respond to a request for comment The analysis is based on U S Department of Potency statistics on pipeline projects currently under progress It is unclear whether all of the planned pipelines will be built Fifty-four of the projects slightly more than half of all pipelines under progress have either not yet been approved or are on hold This includes one of the largest proposed pipelines the billion Alaska Nikiski LNG project The pipe which proponents have sought for decades would transit gas miles from Alaska s North Slope to an LNG export terminal in southern Alaska Completing the proposed export terminal a retrofit of an existing import terminal is included in the project s projected cost The developer the Alaska Gasline Growth Corp has applied for permits for the pipeline several of which were approved during the last Trump administration but still requires more President Donald Trump has directed agencies to speed up permitting and roll back environmental protections He touted the Alaska Nikiski LNG project in an address to Congress earlier this year as truly spectacular and revealed the permitting is gotten Arvind Ravikumar co-director of the Potency Emissions Modeling and Content Lab at the University of Texas at Austin cautioned that the description included figures for carbon dioxide emissions of gas burned by end users in other countries that import the LNG The way international carbon accounting works in this space is that you count only those emissions that happen within your national confines Ravikumar noted However David Lyon a senior methane scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund declared including emissions from burning the gas wherever it occurs made sense Context change is global Lyon commented If we are just exporting our emissions to other countries that s still going to cause surroundings change and have impact However Lyon noted that in specific cases building gas pipelines could genuinely help reduce emissions For example in the Permian basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico the largest oil and gas producing region in the country gas is often flared or vented due to a lack of sufficient pipeline ceiling In such cases additional pipelines could help reduce flaring and its associated emissions But it would be better to avoid drilling new wells in areas that lack sufficient pipeline maximum in the first place Lyon added In comparing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the planned pipelines to those of coal-power plants the record only compares CO emissions between the two fuel sources Elsewhere the analysis discusses methane emissions from the gas supply chain but does not consider methane emissions from coal mines that feed coal-fired power plants A new peer-reviewed research comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of LNG and coal identified methane emissions from coal mines were relatively modest compared to coal s CO emissions In addition to permitting issues economic forces could also limit the number of pipeline projects that get built in the coming years or the extent to which completed pipelines operate at full limit China the world s largest importer of LNG stopped taking U S gas entirely in March in response to U S tariffs on Chinese goods Symons revealed the ongoing pipeline buildout could commit the U S to significantly larger LNG exports for decades to come This locks in more fossil fuel dependency that future presidents won t be able to make go away he explained Policies like tax incentives come and go but pipelines are forever The post The Massive U S Pipeline Buildout Is Mostly for Gas Going Overseas appeared first on The Texas Observer