Natural seeps blamed for methane hot spot
Acting secretary disputes research that points to oil, gas industry as cause
SANTA FE — New Mexico’s top oil and natural-gas regulator said a giant cloud of the greenhouse gas methane hanging over the Southwestern United States comes in large part from natural seeps from underground formations and coal-mining operations, contradicting recent scientific findings.
At a confirmation hearing Wednesday, acting New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Secretary Kenley McQueen said the methane hot spot over the Four Corners region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah dates back millions of years. The Senate later confirmed McQueen to lead the department.
“My personal opinion is that the methane hot spot in the San Juan-Four Corners area has existed for at least the last 10 million years,” said McQueen, describing methane-infused coal outcroppings on the western edge of the San Juan Basin.
The former oil and naturalgas company executive believes a NASA survey of the methane cloud and its sources missed the “larger contributions” of methane from coal-seam outcroppings and coal mining. Methane, a key component of natural gas, has potent heat-trapping properties in the short term when released into the atmosphere.
Researchers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology last year traced the methane hot spot to sources including natural gas wells, storage tanks, pipelines and processing plants. They said only a handful of 250 methane sources were natural seeps from underground formations, in findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Evidence of the Delawaresized hot spot dates as far back as 2003, and a satellite image released in 2014 showed it in vivid color.
McQueen said those surveys of the methane hot spot have not been comprehensive.
“Had they flown the entire basin I think they would have found that the larger contributions of methane were coming from the outcrop as well as the coal-mining operations that are being conducted on the western periphery of the outcrop in support of the two electrical generation stations that are there,” McQueen said. “It’s been exposed and in my opinion it’s the largest component of the methane contamination that was identified by NASA.”
Environmentalists vigorously disputed McQueen’s take on the source of methane.
Ben Shelton, legislative and political director for Conservation Voters New Mexico, called the claims “patently false.”
“The sound science says that industrial production is the foremost source,” he said. “No less than 50 percent of methane in the hot spot is coming from industrial point sources.”
McQueen previously served as vice president of Tulsa, Okla.-based natural gas and oil producer WPX Energy, and once managed the company’s assets in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
States are being left on their own to calculate methane emissions at oil and gas operations after the EPA this month withdrew an Obama-era request that drillers provide emissions data.