US natural gas pipeline accidents pose big, unreported climate threat
(Reuters) - Last October, an Idaho farmer using a backhoe punched a hole into a 22inch (56-cm) pipeline buried under a field, sending more than 51 million cubic feet of natural gas hissing into the air.
While the incident on Williams Companies' WMB.N Northwest Pipeline was big, it was no anomaly along the roughly 3 million miles (4.8 million km) of natural gas pipelines crisscrossing the U.S.
Accidental pipeline leaks – caused by things like punctures, corrosion, severe weather and faulty equipment - happen routinely and are a climate menace that is not currently counted in the official U.S. tally of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Reuters examination of public data and regulatory documents.
Pipeline mishaps unintentionally released nearly 9.7 billion cubic feet of gas into the atmosphere between 2019 and late 2023, according to a Reuters examination of incident report data maintained by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
That is the climate equivalent of running four average-sized coal-fired power plants for a year, according to an Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) online calculator.
Those emissions are currently not included in the nation’s official greenhouse gas count because federal rules exempt large, unexpected leaks, and mainly only capture emissions from regular operations, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The Biden administration aims to change that as early as next year under a set of rules proposed by the EPA to crack down on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, and which would punish emitters with fees of $900 to $1,500 per metric ton when they exceed a certain threshold.
Reuters relied on PHMSA data and interviews with researchers, company officials and regulators to provide new detail on the scale of greenhouse gas emissions from accidental pipeline leaks that could soon be added to the official greenhouse gas tally, as well as the potential cost to companies under the looming fees.
"I don't think the public or regulators have realized just how much methane has been lost from pipeline infrastructure," said Kenneth Clarkson, a spokesperson for the Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog. "Newer studies have come closer to capturing the true amount of emissions and this has started catching the attention of policymakers."