Permian Basin
The Permian Basin also known as the most prolific oil and gas field is located in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico; has been critical to the ongoing oil, gas, and petrochemical boom in the U.S. Both areas, together would emit 46.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide; which is close to an entire year of global emission, equivalent to 59 billion tons. It is also considered a great example of environmental racism and injustice and is expected to become the world's largest source of climate pollution by 2030.
As reported by Texas Tribune in 2018, the Permian Basin's "unprecedented drilling boom" has turned West Texas into the world's "extraction colony," creating significant air pollution in the region while "threatening the planet."[1] The area's production of oil and gas has already quadrupled in the past decade and is projected to produce by the year 2050 nearly 40 billion metric tons of C02.
According to the Permian climate bomb; 80 percent of the emissions which account for over 30.6 billion tons of CO2, would come from burning the liquids and gas produced from new wells that were not in production at the end of 2020. The Permian accounts for 40% of the U.S. oil supply with around 5.4 million barrels of oil being produced per day and all came to be as a result of the Obama administration lifting a decades-long ban on exporting crude oil. Most of these are located in the cities of Odessa and Midland which have produced large quantities of methane and VOCs over the years, which contributed to the current climate changes and poor air quality in the area.
During an episode of the Sierra Club's podcast "Breaking the Cycle" [2], Miguel Escoto with Earthworks and The Sunrise Movement El Paso hub; described the main focus of the Permian is to extract oil as opposed to gas, which fluctuates in prices.
”When fracking to extract oil from the ground, operators will come across excess gas. So they have various options as to how to manage those. Option 1: They can ship it to the market so it can be used for pipelines to refine it. Option 2: They can flare the excess gas and Option 3: They vent it. All of these leading to a bunch of emission getting dumped into the atmosphere ”
Environmentalist Sharon Wilson also working with Earthworks; took an infrared video just weeks ago of invisible greenhouse gases billowing out of a vent stack reportedly equipped with the latest environmental equipment.
"The industry isn't trying to stop, they are just moving as fast as they can and trying to make money. When the price of gas goes down, more gas goes into the air"
Exports
In 2020, over 20% of U.S. crude oil production was exported, with the vast majority of those exports coming from the Permian. It's expected the Permian oil producers could become the driving force behind the second wave of LNG supply; which was the exact words of the chief executives at Gastech during a conference in Houston. [3]
The Next Decade Chairman and CEO Matt Schatzman said:
”The Permian Basin is going to change the global LNG landscape. Every incremental hydrocarbon produced from this day forward - whether its oil, liquids or gas, needs to be exported”
World's worse polluter
A survey sponsored by the United Nations during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt; denominated the Permian Basin as the World's top polluter. This result was followed by a tracking consortium Climate TRACE which also categorized it as No. 1. Jon Goldstein from the Enviromental Defense Funds said:
"This is the U.S., we should be leading in trying to create the cleanest energy we can. We shouldn't be leading on having the most highly polluting oil and gas basin in the work".
The Enviromental Defense Fund has done extensive testing and monitoring of methane pollution in the Permian and has consistently found alarming levels of methane being flared. The Climate TRACE reports around 200 million tons of greenhouse emissions last year and compared it to Russia which is the second biggest polluter on Earth. [4]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.texastribune.org/2018/10/11/west-texas-becomes-worlds-extraction-colony-oil-gas-exports-surge/
- ↑ https://www.sierraclub.org/breaking-cycle-podcast/s1e6-abandoned-well-epidemic
- ↑ https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/podcasts/oil/020923-oil-gas-production-earnings-investment-inflation-americas-profits-upstream
- ↑ https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2022/11/16/texas--permian-basin-identified-as-the-world-s-top-polluter#:~:text=into%20the%20environment.-,Climate%20TRACE%20reports%20the%20Permian%20Basin%20churned%20out%20more%20than,and%20gas%20field%20in%20Russia.