The Massive U.S. Pipeline Buildout Is Mostly for Gas Going Overseas
Editor s Note This article originally appeared at Inside Setting News a nonprofit independent news organization that covers situation capacity and the setting It is republished with permission Sign up for their newsletter here More than three-quarters of new gas pipeline ceiling now under advance in the U S would feed additional liquefied natural gas exports rather than supporting domestic capacity necessities a new review concludes Greenhouse gas emissions tied to that new quota would be far larger than the current environment trash from all coal-fired power plants nationwide according to the assessment published Monday by the Center for Vitality Environmental Analysis CEEA is a in the last few days formed think tank based in Arlington Virginia that focuses on vitality and environmental plan 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 conditions strategy advisor revealed 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 ceiling a figure just below the total volume of U S natural gas production in according to the account The largest planned pipelines across the country and percent of total quota of working pipeline projects are intended to export gas overseas as LNG based on the authors assessment of federal details and other citizens records The additional gas shipments would have vital implications for state change If all of the pipelines are built and run at full ceiling carbon dioxide emissions from burning this additional gas would be two and half times greater than the CO as of now distributed from all U S coal-fired power plants the assessment located This doesn t include emissions of methane a conditions 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 state punch nearly twice that of CO emissions from coal-fired power plants over a -year period according to the assessment 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 document 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 conditions footprint of natural gas as bad as coal in several regions of the country announced Danny Richter a senior fellow with CEEA and the summary s lead author We had a clear path to clean up the methane issue including the methane emissions reduction scheme 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 review that it was created with the outcome already determined and no desire to provide facts an EPA spokesperson explained Inside Situation News U S methane emissions have been falling for decades thanks to American innovation not heavy-handed cabinet 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 disclosed 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 document is based on U S Department of Potential content on pipeline projects in the present 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 expansion 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 shipping 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 Maturation Corp has applied for permits for the pipeline numerous 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 stated the permitting is gotten Arvind Ravikumar co-director of the Capacity Emissions Modeling and Figures Lab at the University of Texas at Austin cautioned that the assessment 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 frontier Ravikumar commented However David Lyon a senior methane scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund declared including emissions from burning the gas wherever it occurs made sense Atmosphere change is global Lyon explained If we are just exporting our emissions to other countries that s still going to cause context change and have impact However Lyon noted that in various cases building gas pipelines could indeed 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 threshold 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 threshold in the first place Lyon added In comparing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the planned pipelines to those of coal-power plants the review only compares CO emissions between the two fuel sources Elsewhere the assessment discusses methane emissions from the gas supply chain but does not consider methane emissions from coal mines that feed coal-fired power plants A latest peer-reviewed research comparing the greenhouse gas emissions of LNG and coal exposed 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 ceiling 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 stated 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 declared 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
