The massive expansion of fracking operations in the Permian Basin enabled the U.S. to extract more oil than any country, ever, in 2023, according to a DOE report released Monday. Permian fracking operations have also made the U.S. the world’s largest methane polluter from oil and gas operations, the IEA reported in its annual Global Methane Tracker, released Wednesday. \
Methane traps more than 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2 over a 20-year time scale and is responsible for about 30% of global warming to date, according to the IEA. Satellites detected a 50% increase in large methane leaks worldwide in 2023 over the previous year, the IEA said.
A study published in Nature, also Wednesday, found U.S. oil and gas operations release three times more methane pollution than the EPA estimates, with more than half of that pollution coming from just 1% of oil and gas sites. The study follows many similar reports finding the EPA drastically underestimates the oil and gas industry’s methane pollution and is consistent with others’ findings that a disproportionate amount of methane pollution comes from a small number of sources.
About 40% of global methane pollution from fossil fuel operations could be prevented at little or no additional cost, according to the IEA. (Triple EPA estimates: AP, NPR, New York Times $; DOE: Houston Chronicle, Axios; IEA Global Methane Tracker: Bloomberg $, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Reuters, Houston Chronicle, Axios, The Hill, Politico Pro $, Reuters, E&E $, The Hill)