The US natural gas industry is leaking way more methane than previously thought. Here’s why that matters
Research reveals that methane emissions from U.S. natural gas operations are significantly underestimated, with a leak rate of 2.3 percent, which poses serious climate concerns and challenges in accurate measurement.
Natural gas is displacing coal, which could help fight climate change because burning it produces fewer carbon emissions. But producing and transporting natural gas releases methane, a greenhouse gas that also contributes to climate change. How big is the methane problem?
This experience has given us a unique perspective regarding the major sources of methane emissions from natural gas and the challenges the industry faces in terms of detecting and reducing, if not eliminating, them.
Our work, along with numerous other research projects, was recently folded into a new study published in the journal Science. This comprehensive snapshot suggests that methane emissions from oil and gas operations are much higher than current EPA estimates.
What’s wrong with methane
One way to quantify the magnitude of the methane leakage is to divide the amount of methane emitted each year by the total amount of methane pumped out of the ground each year from natural gas and oil wells. The EPA currently estimates this methane leak rate to be 1.4 percent. That is, for every cubic foot of natural gas drawn from underground reservoirs, 1.4 percent of it is lost into the atmosphere.
This study synthesized the results from a five-year series of 16 studies coordinated by environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which involved more than 140 researchers from over 40 institutions and 50 natural gas companies.
The effort brought together scholars based at universities, think tanks and the industry itself to make the most accurate estimate possible of the total amount of methane emitted from all U.S. oil and gas operations. It integrated data from a multitude of recent studies with measurements made on the ground and from the air.
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All told, based on the results of the new study, the U.S. oil and gas industry is leaking 13 million metric tons of methane each year, which means the methane leak rate is 2.3 percent. This 60 percent difference between our new estimate and the EPA’s current one can have profound climate consequences.
Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 80 times the climate warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it is released.
An earlier EDF study showed that a methane leak rate of greater than 3 percent would result in no immediate climate benefits from retiring coal-fired power plants in favor of natural gas power plants.
That means even with a 2.3 percent leakage rate, the growing share of U.S. electricity powered by natural gas is doing something to slow the pace of climate change. However, these climate benefits could be far greater.
Also, at a methane leakage rate of 2.3 percent, many other uses of natural gas besides generating electricity are conclusively detrimental for the climate. For example, EDF found that replacing the diesel used in most trucks or the gasoline consumed by most cars with natural gas would require a leakage rate of less than 1.4 percent before there would be any immediate climate benefit.
Perhaps you’ve never contemplated the long journey that natural gas travels before you can ignite the burners on the gas stove in your kitchen.
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But on top of the 500,000 natural gas wells operating in the U.S. today, there are 2 million miles of pipes and millions of valves, fittings, tanks, compressors and other components operating 24 hours per day, seven days a week to deliver natural gas to your home.
That natural gas that you burn when you whip up a batch of pancakes may have traveled 1,000 miles or more as it wended through this complicated network. Along the way, there were ample opportunities for some of it to leak out into the atmosphere.
Natural gas leaks can be accidental, caused by malfunctioning equipment, but a lot of natural gas is also released intentionally to perform process operations such as opening and closing valves. In addition, the tens of thousands of compressors that increase the pressure and pump the gas along through the network are powered by engines that burn natural gas and their exhaust contains some unburned natural gas.
Since the natural gas delivered to your home is 85 to 95 percent methane, natural gas leaks are predominantly methane. While methane poses the greatest threat to the climate because of its greenhouse gas potency, natural gas contains other hydrocarbons that can degrade regional air quality and are bad for human health.
Inventory tallies vs. aircraft surveillance
The EPA Greenhouse Gas Inventory is done in a way experts like us call a “bottom-up” approach. It entails tallying up all of the nation’s natural gas equipment – from household gas meters to wellpads – and estimating an annualized average emission rate for every category and adding it all up.
There are two challenges to this approach. First, there are no accurate equipment records for many of these categories. Second, when components operate improperly or fail, emissions balloon, making it hard to develop an accurate and meaningful annualized emission rate for each source.
“Top-down” approaches, typically requiring aircraft, are the alternative. They measure methane concentrations upwind and downwind of large geographic areas. But this approach has its own shortcomings.
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First, it captures all methane emissions, rather than just the emissions tied to natural gas operations – including the methane from landfills, cows and even the leaves rotting in your backyard. Second, these one-time snapshots may get distorted depending on what’s going on while planes fly around capturing methane data.
Historically, top-down approaches estimate emissions that are about twice bottom-up estimates. Some regional top-down methane leak rate estimates have been as high as 8 percent while some bottom-up estimates have been as low as 1 percent.
More recent work, including the Science study, have performed coordinated campaigns in which the on-the-ground and aircraft measurements are made concurrently, while carefully modeling emission events.
Helpful gadgets and sound policy
On a sunny morning in October 2013, our research team pulled up to a natural gas gathering compressor station in Texas. Using an US$80,000 infrared camera, we immediately located an extraordinarily large leak of colorless, odorless methane that was invisible to the operator who quickly isolated and fixed the problem.
We then witnessed the methane emissions decline tenfold – the facility leak rate fell from 9.8 percent to 0.7 percent before our eyes.
It is not economically feasible, of course, to equip all natural gas workers with $80,000 cameras, or to hire the drivers required to monitor every wellpad on a daily basis when there are 40,000 oil and gas wells in Weld County, Colorado, alone.
Technology alone won’t solve the problem, however. We believe that slashing the nation’s methane leak rate will require a collaborative effort between industry and government. And based on our experience in Colorado, which has developed some of the nation’s strictest methane emissions regulations, we find that best practices become standard practices with strong regulations.
We believe that the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back regulations, without regard to whether they are working or not, will not only have profound climate impacts. They will also jeopardize the health and safety of all Americans while undercutting efforts by the natural gas industry to cut back on the pollution it produces.
Anthony J. Marchese, Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering; Director, Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory; Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University and Dan Zimmerle, Senior Research Associate and Director of METEC, Colorado State University
Kelsey Juliana, a lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit over responsibility for climate change, speaks at a 2019 rally in Oregon.
AP Photo/Steve DipaolaHannah Wiseman, Penn State
The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 ended a decade-old lawsuit filed by a group of children who sought to hold the federal government responsible for some of the consequences of climate change. But just two months earlier, the justices allowed a similar suit from the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, to continue against oil and gas companies.
Evidence shows that fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and the federal government have known about climate change, its dangers and its human causes for at least 50 years. But the steps taken by fossil fuel companies, utilities and governments, including the U.S. government, have not been enough to meet international climate targets.
So local and state governments and citizens have asked the courts to force companies and public agencies to act. Their results have varied, with limited victories to date. But the cases keep coming.
In response to this federal executive seesaw of climate action, some legal claims use a court-based, or common law, approach to address climate concerns. For instance, in Connecticut v. American Electric Power, filed in 2004, nine states asked a federal judge to order power plants to reduce their emissions. The states said those emissions contributed to global warming, which they argued met the federal common law definition of a “public nuisance.”
That case ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the existence of a statute – the federal Clean Air Act – meant common law did not apply. Other plaintiffs have tried to use the “public nuisance” claim or a related common-law claim of “trespass” to force large power plants or oil and gas producers to pay climate-related damages. But in those cases, too, courts found that the Clean Air Act overrode the common-law grounds for those claims.
With those case outcomes, many plaintiffs have shifted their strategies, focusing more on state courts and seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for allegedly deceiving the public about the causes and effects of climate change.
Three examples of petroleum industry advertisements a lawsuit alleges are misleading about the causes of climate change.State of Maine v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sunoco and American Petroleum Insititute
Examining deception
In many cases, state and local governments are arguing that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change and deceived the public about them, and that the industry exaggerated the extent of its investments in energy that doesn’t emit carbon.
Rather than directly asking courts to order reduced carbon emissions, these cases tend to seek damages that will help governments cover the costs associated with climate change, such as construction of cooling centers
and repair of roads damaged by increased precipitation.
In legal terms, the lawsuits are saying oil and gas companies violated consumer-protection laws and committed common-law civil violations such as negligence. For instance, the city of Chicago alleges that major petroleum giants – along with the industry trade association the American Petroleum Institute – had “abundant knowledge” of the public harms of fossil fuels yet “actively campaigned” to hide that information and deceive consumers. Many other complaints by states and local governments make similar allegations.
Another lawsuit, from the state of Maine, lists and provides photographs of a litany of internal industry documents showing industry knowledge of the threat of climate change. That lawsuit also cites a 1977 memo from an Exxon employee to Exxon executives, which stated that “current scientific opinion overwhelmingly favors attributing atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to fossil fuel consumption,” and a 1979 internal Exxon memo about the buildup of carbon dioxide emissions, which warned that “(t)he potential problem is great and urgent.”
These complaints also show organizations supported by fossil fuel companies published ads as far back as the 1990s, with titles such as “Apocalypse No” and “Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?” Some of these ads – part of a broader campaign – were funded by a group called the Information Council for the Environment, supported by coal producers and electric utilities.
Courts have dismissed some of these complaints, finding that federal laws overrule the principles those suits are based on. But many are still winding their way through the courts.
In 2023 the Supreme Court of Hawaii found that federal laws do not prevent climate claims based on state common law. In January 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the case to continue.
Lead claimant Rikki Held, then 22, confers with lawyers before the beginning of a 2023 Montana trial about young people’s rights in a time of climate change.William Campbell/Getty Images
Other approaches
Still other litigation approaches argue that governments inadequately reviewed the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, or even supported or subsidized those emissions caused by private industry. Those lawsuits – some of which were filed by children, with help from their parents or legal guardians – claim the governments’ actions violated people’s constitutional rights.
For instance, children in the Juliana v. United States case, first filed in 2015, said 50 years of petroleum-supporting actions by presidents and various federal agencies had violated their fundamental “right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that their claim was a “political question” – meant for Congress, not the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider that ruling in March 2025.
But children in Montana found more success. The Montana Constitution requires state officials and all residents to “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment … for present and future generations.” In 2024 the Montana Supreme Court determined that this provision “includes a stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.”
The Montana Supreme Court also reviewed a state law banning officials from considering greenhouse gas emissions of projects approved by the state. The court found that the ban violated the state constitution, too. Since then, the Montana Supreme Court has specifically required state officials to review the climate effects of a project for which permits were challenged.
Concerned people and groups continue to file climate-related lawsuits across the country and around the world. They are seeing mixed results, but as the cases continue and more are filed, they are drawing attention to potential corporate and government wrongdoing, as well as the human costs of climate change. And they are inspiring shareholders and citizens to demand more accurate information and action from fossil fuel companies and electric utilities.Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
One of two main craters on Alaska’s Mount Spurr, shown in 1991. Earthquake activity suggests the volcano is close to erupting again in 2025.
R.G. McGimsey/Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey, CC BYDavid Kitchen, University of Richmond
Volcanoes inspire awe with spectacular eruptions and incandescent rivers of lava, but often their deadliest hazard is what quietly falls from the sky.
When a large volcano erupts, as Mount Spurr appears close to doing about 80 miles from Anchorage, Alaska, it can release enormous volumes of ash. Fine ash can infiltrate the lungs of people and animals who breathe it in, poison crops and disrupt aquatic life. Thick deposits of ash can collapse roofs, cripple utilities and disrupt transport networks.
Ash may lack the visual impact of flowing lava, but as a geologist who studies disasters, I’m aware that ash travels farther, lasts longer and leaves deep scars.
Ash buried cars and buildings after the 1984 eruption of Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.Volcano Hazards Program, U.S. Geological Survey
Volcanic ash: What it is, and why it matters
Volcanic ash forms when viscous magma – molten rock from deep beneath Earth’s surface – erupts, exploding into shards of rock, mineral and glass carried in a near-supersonic stream of hot gas.
Towering clouds of ash rise several miles into the atmosphere, where the ash is captured by high-altitude winds that can carry it hundreds or even thousands of miles.
As the volcanic ash settles back to Earth, it accumulates in layers that typically decrease in thickness with distance from the eruption source. Near the vent, the ash may be several feet deep, but communities farther away may see only a dusting.
When Mount Spurr erupted in 1992, a dark column of ash and gas shot into the atmosphere from the volcano’s Crater Peak vent. Wind patterns determine where the ash will fall.U.S. Geological Survey
Breathing danger: Health risks from ash
Breathing volcanic ash can irritate the throat and lungs, trigger asthma attacks and aggravate chronic respiratory conditions such as COPD.
The finest particles pose the greatest risk because they can penetrate deep into the lungs and cause death by asphyxiation in the worst cases. Mild, short-term symptoms often resolve with rest. However, the long-term consequences of ash exposure can include silicosis, a lung disease and a possible cause of cancer.
The danger increases in dry regions where fallen ash can be kicked up into the air again by wind or human activity.
Risks to pets and livestock
Humans aren’t the only ones at risk. Animals experience similar respiratory symptoms to humans.
Domestic pets can develop respiratory distress, eye inflammation and paw irritation from exposure to ash.
Ash covers sheep in Argentina after the 2011 Puyehue volcanic eruption in Chile.Federico Grosso/U.S. Geological Survey
Livestock face greater dangers. If grazing animals eat volcanic ash, it can damage their teeth, block their intestines and poison them.
During the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland, farmers were advised to shelter sheep and cattle because the ash contained fluoride concentrations above the recognized safety threshold of 400 parts per million. Animals that remained exposed became sick and some died.
Harm to crops, soil and water
Soil and crops can also be damaged. Volcanic ash alters the acidity of soil and introduces harmful elements such as arsenic and sulfur into the environment.
While the ash can add nutrients such as potassium and phosphorus that enhance fertility, the immediate impact is mostly harmful.
Ash can smother crops, block sunlight and clog the tiny stomata, or pores, in leaves that allow plants to exchange gases with the atmosphere. It can also introduce toxins that render food unmarketable. Vegetables, fruit trees and vines are particularly vulnerable, but even sturdy cereals and grasses can die if ash remains on leaves or poisons emerging shoots.
Following the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption, vast tracts of farmland in central Luzon in the Philippines were rendered unproductive for years due to acidic ash and buried topsoil. If multiple ashfalls occur in a growing season, crop failure becomes a near certainty. It was the cause of a historic famine that followed the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.
Ash from a 1953 eruption of Mount Spurr included very fine grains, like powder. The ash cloud reached about 70,000 feet high and left Anchorage under a blanket of ash up to a quarter-inch deep, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report at the time.James St. John via Wikimedia Commons, CC BYElectron microscope images of ash show how sharp the shards are. The top left image of shards from Mount Etna in 2002 is 1 mm across. Top right is an ash particle from Mount St. Helens magnified 200 times. The shards in the lower images are less than 0.064 mm.Volcano Hazards Program, U.S. Geological Survey
Ash can also contaminate surface water by introducing toxins and increasing the water’s acidity. The toxins can leach into groundwater, contaminating wells. Fine ash particles can also settle in waterways and smother aquatic plants and animals. During the 2008 Chaitén eruption in Chile, ash contamination led to widespread fish deaths in the Río Blanco.
Ash can ground airplanes, gum up infrastructure
Ash clouds are extremely dangerous to aircraft. The glassy ash particles melt when sucked into jet turbines, clog fuel systems and can stall engines in midair.
In 1982, British Airways Flight 9 lost power in all four engines after flying through an ash cloud. A similar incident occurred in 1989 to KLM Flight 867 over Alaska. In 2010, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull eruption grounded more than 100,000 flights across Europe, disrupting travel for over 10 million passengers and costing the global economy billions of dollars.
Volcanic ash can also wreak havoc on infrastructure by clogging water supplies, short-circuiting electrical systems and collapsing roofs under its weight. It can disrupt transportation, communication, rescue and power networks, as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines dramatically demonstrated.
What to do during ashfall
During an ashfall event, the most effective strategy to stay safe is to stay indoors as much as possible and avoid inhaling ash particles.
Anyone who must go outside should wear a properly fitted N95 or P2 mask. Cloth masks provide little protection against fine ash. Rainwater tanks, troughs and open wells should be covered and monitored for contamination. Livestock should be moved to clean pastures or given uncontaminated fodder.
The challenges Alaska is facing if Mount Spurr erupts.
To reduce structural damage, ash should be cleared from roofs and gutters promptly, especially before rainfall.
Older adults, children and people who are sick are at greatest risk, particularly those living in poorly ventilated homes. Rural communities that are dependent on agriculture and livestock are disproportionately affected by ashfall, as are low-income people who lack access to clean water, protective masks or safe shelter.
Communities can stay informed about ash risks through official alerts, including those from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers, which monitor ash dispersion and issue timely warnings. The International Volcanic Health Hazard Network also offers guidelines on personal protection, emergency planning and ash cleanup.
The long tail of ash
Volcanic ash may fall quietly, but its effects are widespread, persistent and potentially deadly. It poses a chronic threat to health, agriculture, infrastructure and aquatic systems.
Recognizing the risk is a crucial first step to protecting lives. Effective planning and public awareness can further help reduce the damage.
David Kitchen, Associate Professor of Geology, University of Richmond
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco in 1989 caused about $6.8 billion in damage and 63 deaths.
J.K. Nakata/U.S. Geological SurveyJonathan P. Stewart, University of California, Los Angeles and Lucy Arendt, St. Norbert College
Earthquakes and the damage they cause are apolitical. Collectively, we either prepare for future earthquakes or the population eventually pays the price. The earthquakes that struck Myanmar on March 28, 2025, collapsing buildings and causing more than 3,000 deaths, were a sobering reminder of the risks and the need for preparation.
In the U.S., this preparation hinges in large part on the expertise of scientists and engineers in federal agencies who develop earthquake hazard models and contribute to the creation of building codes designed to ensure homes, high-rises and other structures won’t collapse when the ground shakes.
Local communities and states decide whether to adopt building code documents. But those documents and other essential resources are developed through programs supported by federal agencies working in partnership with practicing engineers and earthquake experts at universities.
This essential federal role is illustrated by two programs that we work closely with as an earthquake engineer and a disaster management expert whose work focuses on seismic risk.
Improving building codes
First, seismologists and earthquake engineers at the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, produce the National Seismic Hazard Model. These maps, based on research into earthquake sources such as faults and how seismic waves move through the earth’s crust, are used to determine the forces that structures in each community should be designed to resist.
A steering committee of earthquake experts from the private sector and universities works with USGS to ensure that the National Seismic Hazard Model implements the best available science.
In this 2023 update of the national seismic risk map, red areas have the greatest chance of a damaging earthquake occurring within 100 years.USGS
Second, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, supports the process for periodically updating building codes. That includes supporting the work of the National Institute of Building Sciences’ Provisions Update Committee, which recommends building code revisions based on investigations of earthquake damage.
More broadly, FEMA, the USGS, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation work together through the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program to advance earthquake science and turn knowledge of earthquake risks into safer standards, better building design and education. Some of those agencies have been threatened by potential job and funding cuts under the Trump administration, and others face uncertainty regarding continuation of federal support for their work.
It is in large part because of the National Seismic Hazard Model and regularly updated building codes that U.S. buildings designed to meet modern code requirements are considered among the safest in the world, despite substantial seismic hazards in several states.
This paradigm has been made possible by the technical expertise and lack of political agendas among the federal staff. Without that professionalism, we believe experts from outside the federal government would be less likely to donate their time.
The impacts of these and other programs are well documented. We can point to the limited fatalities from U.S. earthquakes such as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake near San Francisco, the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles and the 2001 Nisqually earthquake near Seattle. Powerful earthquakes in countries lacking seismic preparedness, often due to lack of adoption or enforcement of building codes, have produced much greater devastation and loss of life.
The US has long relied on people with expertise
These programs and the federal agencies supporting them have benefited from a high level of staff expertise because hiring and advancement processes have been divorced from politics and focused on qualifications and merit.
This has not always been the case.
For much of early U.S. history, federal jobs were awarded through a patronage system, where political loyalty determined employment. As described in “The Federal Civil Service System and The Problem of Bureaucracy,” this system led to widespread corruption and dysfunction, with officials focused more on managing quid pro quo patronage than governing effectively. That peaked in 1881 with President James Garfield’s assassination by Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled supporter who had been denied a government appointment.
The passage of the Pendleton Act by Congress in 1883 shifted federal employment to a merit-based system. This preference for a merit-based system was reinforced in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. It states as national policy that “to provide the people of the United States with a competent, honest, and productive workforce … and to improve the quality of public service, Federal personnel management should be implemented consistent with merit system principles.”
The shift away from a patronage system produced a more stable and efficient federal workforce, which has enabled improvements in many critical areas, including seismic safety and disaster response.
Merit-based civil service matters for safety
While the work of these federal employees often goes unnoticed, the benefits are demonstrable and widespread. That becomes most apparent when disasters strike and buildings that meet modern code requirements remain standing.
A merit-based civil service is not just a democratic ideal but a proven necessity for the safety and security of the American people, one we hope will continue well into the future. This can be achieved by retaining federal scientists and engineers and supporting the essential work of federal agencies.
This article, originally published March 31, 2025, has been updated with the rising death toll in Myanamar.Jonathan P. Stewart, Professor of Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles and Lucy Arendt, Professor of Business Administration Management, St. Norbert College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
