Environmental Group Says Industry Could Do More to Cut Harmful Methane Leaks

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

March 28, 2012 | 11:45 AM

Susan Phillips / StateImpactPA

A rig in Susquehanna County drills into the Marcellus Shale formation.

In the debate over how much “cleaner” natural gas is compared to coal, one of the factors up for discussion is how much methane gets released during the gas extraction process. Despite the fact that it burns cleaner than coal at power plants, methane leaks from wellhead to stove top can also serve as a destructive greenhouse gas. A report out Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council says the oil and gas industry could cut those leaky emissions by 80 percent. The NRDC says this would save them $2 billion a year.

“Right now, the oil and gas industry is letting pollution and profits evaporate into thin air, where they contribute to global warming, heart attacks and asthma,” said the NRDC’s Dan Lashof, in a press release. “We know how to stop those leaks to keep them from going to waste, threatening our health and harming our environment. It is shocking that industry has not put these measures into place when they’re profitable, available and effective – and will even save them money, all at the same time.”

The report details 10 technological improvements that could reduce methane emissions. The NRDC says one-third of all methane emissions result from the industry’s extraction, production and transmission process. A study by researchers at Cornell University last year, showed shale gas production released more methane than previously thought, and could actually be worse for climate change than coal-burning power plants. But the results of that study are controversial, and have been disputed by another set of Cornell researchers.