There are tens of thousands of oil and gas operations scattered throughout the oil-rich Permian Basin.
The invisible gas from the gleaming white storage tanks up into the cloudless blue sky is not visible through the chain link fence.
Methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas, was being released into the atmosphere by the station owned by West Texas Gas Inc. The climate of burning seven tanker trucks full of gasoline every day is affected by that.
Outsized emissions aren't illegal or regulated. Carbon Mapper, a partnership of university researchers and NASA, detected 533 methane "super emitters" during an aerial survey of the Permian in 2021.
The group documented massive amounts of methane from oil and gas operations across the Permian, a 250 mile-wide bone-dry expanse along the Texas-New Mexico border that was the bottom of a shallow sea one billion years ago. Over and over again, hundreds of those sites werelching the gas. The gushers are going un fixed.
The same sites are active all the time. Riley Duren is a research scientist at the University of Arizona and leader of Carbon Mapper.
The sites were identified by their coordinates. The coordinates of the 533 "super-emitting" sites were cross-referenced with state drilling permits, air quality permits, and other public documents to piece together the corporations most likely responsible.
An AP analysis shows that just 10 companies owned at least some of the sites. West Texas gas had 11.
Climate change will be caused by the methane released by these companies. Before industrial times, the amount of methane in the air was less than it is today. The year was the worst on record.
The earth-warming power of methane is 83 times stronger than the carbon dioxide that comes from cars and power plants. The invisible gas has not been regulated by Congress or the EPA. It's up to oil and gas producers to cut methane emissions on their own.
The director of the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity stated that methane is a pollutant. Methane is a blowtorch if carbon dioxide is the fossil fuel.
InterMITTENT EMISSIONS aren't indispensable.
The intermittent nature of methane emissions makes it difficult to track them. One day a well may be emitting methane, but not the next.
AP journalists visited more than two dozen sites flagged as persistent methane super emitters by Carbon Mapper with a FLIR camera and recorded video of methane escaping from production infrastructure. Many of the worst emitters are charging the Earth's atmosphere with extra gas, according to the AP's camera work.
A large amount of gas escaped from tanks at a WTG compressor station about fifteen miles away from the Sale Ranch oil field. Carbon Mapper estimated that the site emitted about 410 kilomes of methane per hour.
Targa Resources, a Houston-based natural gas storage, processing and distribution company, was the closest operator to 30 sites that were emitting a combined 3,000 kilowatts of methane per hour.
Targa didn't reply to a lot of the questions from the AP.
Another 21 super-emitting sources have been found at facilities that have been sold. The equipment was expected to release 3,525 kilo of methane an hour.
Wasting money on a product.
Operators are wasting the very product they are working to extract from this type of pollution. The target gas that operators drill for, process and sell all over the world is methane gas.
The basin doesn't have enough capacity to gather and transport the huge amount of natural gas that has been unlocked by frackers. Billions of dollars have been invested into new terminals along the Gulf Coast to ship the surplus of American gas to overseas markets.
Companies are saying they are doing better.
Houston-based enterprise products said it was cracking down The acquired assets are being integrated and are committed to being operated safely.
He didn't say what the company would do to cut methane emissions.
In a statement, West Texas Gas said it routinely conducts its own overflights with gas detection equipment and within the last six months had either repaired or upgraded nine of the super emitting sites. It wasn't clear what improvements were made to the other site. The last site was inspected and there was no leak, according to WTG.
According to the statement, "West Texas Gas is deeply committed to environmental stewardship and continuously strengthens company processes and procedures to ensure we operate in a way that is consistent with that commitment."
There have been years of reaction.
New federal rules requiring the oil and gas sector to slash methane emissions by 40 percent by 2025.
The policies that were scrapped before they took effect were the ones that Trump derided as a Chinese hoax.
The fossil fuels industry contributed to Trump's campaign. It won him a lot of support in the Republican-dominated cities and towns that are home to the oil and gas industry.
One day last fall, the parking lot at Big John's Feedlot was filled with American-made pickup trucks. There are portraits of John Wayne and a deer wearing a cowboy hat on the walls of the restaurant.
The owner asked if anyone in the building could drive an electric car. Stansel said that she believes in God.
President Joe Biden ordered the EPA to write new rules to reduce the oil and gas industry's methane emissions on the first day of his administration. There are rules to address emissions from hundreds of thousands of sites.
Toms Carbonell told the AP that reducing methane emissions is urgent.
Reducing air emissions from the oil and natural gas sector is a priority for the EPA. He said that methane is helping drive impacts that communities across the country are already seeing.
There is an unknown percentage.
Methane is kept in an inventory by the U.S. government. Policy makers and scientists use those figures to figure out how much the planet will warm in the future.
The government database doesn't always account for the true rate of emissions.
The greenhouse gas reporting program requires companies to report emissions over 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. There are a few dozen sites that exceed that threshold.
More than 140 of the facilities identified by Carbon Mapper were on track to exceed the reporting limit.
Carbon Mapper estimated that Mako emitted an average of 870 kilomes of methane per hour over the course of four times. That would be seven times the federal reporting threshold over the course of a year.
In the most recent year that data is available, the West Texas Gas subsidiary that operates Mako reported that methane emissions from all of its boosting and gathering operations were just one-twelfth of what Carbon Mapper documented billowing from the Mako site alone.
When adjusted for overflights where no emissions were recorded, other companies reported methane emissions much lower than what Carbon Mapper observed.
Methane equivalent to 42,000 metric tons of CO2 was released by the company for a year of operations. They are likely to emit that much in 46 days.
The company would surpass what it reported to the EPA in just three months.
The company is committed to being transparent about its progress in reducing methane emissions, according to a spokesman. Methane is reported by oil and gas companies.
Any emissions at its plants are typically non-methane, and it has a "best-in-class" leak detection program. The science behind how Carbon Mapper measured its methane emissions rates was questioned by the company.
Carbon Mapper uses a NASA instrument, not a camera. The unique chemicalfingerprint of methane in the atmosphere is measured by an airborne IR spectrometer. The mass of the methane is measured by the instrument. The hourly emissions rate is estimated using the wind speed at the site.
Duren said that the estimation method has been used in multiple peer-reviewed studies.
AP found just a single Vaquero site was emitting methane at a rate of 53,000 tons per year.
The company didn't have anything to say, according to a spokesman.
Though the Clean Air Act requires companies to accurately report greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA can't give an example of a polluter being fined or cited for failing to report.
Texas does not enforce immigration laws.
Texas is more hands off if the federal government is behind the curve on how much methane emissions have increased.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had little interest in monitoring, documenting or addressing airborne emissions, not even the toxic chemicals such as hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide and benzene that can come from oil and gas operations.
Doty is a private consultant for clients that include environmental groups.
Gary Rasp, a spokesman for the company, told the AP that no one from the agency has ever visited the site.
According to Doty, the agency discouraged staff from investigating air quality violations against the oil and gas industry.
Before becoming President Donald Trump's energy secretary, he was a champion of the fossil fuels industry. Energy Transfer is one of the nation's largest oil and gas company.
The Texas environmental agency has cameras that can detect air pollutants leaking from oil and gas facilities, but after they began documenting methane emissions, they were told to keep the cameras locked away.
Even though they have 20 cameras, they don't take them out in the field. Methane isn't really a problem for the tceq. Climate change can't be openly discussed within that agency.
The fiscal year 2021 enforcement report seems to agree with Doty. Of 5,362 reported excess emissions events statewide, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality issued no findings in 4,486 of them and asked for corrective action in 19 of them.
The average fine for air, water or waste violations is less than $4,000, but most oil and gas companies get away with less than that.
It was fined $46,000 last year for Flares and valve malfunction at its Texas facilities. It is worth more than $50 billion. State fines of $100,000 were faced by Targa. The companies were cited for methane emissions. Both denied the allegations and helped school districts buy new buses.
Regulators across the border in New Mexico are different.
Methane is a wasted industrial resource that when released into the atmosphere deprives the state of tax revenue.
Producers are required to report the amount of gas they produce and the lost gas. Producers have to give an explanation when gas is burned off.
There are two opposing tendencies.
Demand for natural gas is growing even as nations try to lower their carbon footprints. Since the beginning of the war in Ukranian, U.S. gas shipments have tripled.
About 500 rigs are drilling new wells in the Permian basin on a daily basis. After a couple weeks, hulking steel goliaths that seem to spring up as spontaneously as desert flowers after a storm, move on to somewhere else.
The majority of rigs run day and night. There are rows and rows of bunk house trailers where weekly rents are comparable to big city apartments. Blue-collar incomes can easily reach six figures a year because of the constant need for skilled workers.
There were more than 5000 new well-drilling permits issued in the Texas portion of the Permian. The industry is on track to surpass that figure by the end of the year.
Corporate bets that demand for oil and gas will continue for decades to come are reflected in the millions of dollars invested in each new well.
As Biden and other world leaders promise to cut methane emissions, the search for more gas and oil is going on.
We are in a decisive decade for the Earth's climate, with sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed immediately to avoid the most catastrophic disasters and prevent coastal cities from being swamped by rising seas.
Billions of people are struggling to cope with weeks of heat waves as this summer is on pace to be the hottest on record. In Texas, the primary electricity provider had to take emergency measures to keep the state's grid from failing because of soaring demand for airconditioning.
The climate crisis is a code red for humanity according to Biden.
The president said he would do everything he could to win the clean energy future. They are counting on us.
The United States signed on to a pledge to reduce methane emissions. The target was agreed to by more than 100 countries.
To meet that deadline, the American oil and gas industry would have to reduce emissions at a rate never before seen.
According to the industry, it is working towards that goal.
Frank Macchiarola is the senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs at the American petroleum Institute. We want to bring it to market. It makes sense from an environmental point of view.
Climate scientists and environmentalists warn that the industry'sIncremental efforts are not enough to avoid dire consequences.
A senior climate scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund said that we can't limit future warming to 2 degrees Celsius if we don't drastically cut emissions. The quicker we cut methane in half the better off our climate will be.
That's right.
A data journalist from New York gave a contribution.
That's right.
You can follow the AP investigative reporters on social media.
Email investigative@ap.org if you would like to contact the AP's investigations team.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
