GHG Emissions in BC

by Arthur Caldicott

British Columbia’s production of natural gas and coal is the business of moving hydrocarbons out of theground to customers who burn them – to heat their homes, gener­ate electricity, and make steel.

Ultimately all the carbon in these fossil fuel commodities ends up in the atmosphere, as carbon dioxide (CO2), the number one greenhouse gas (GHG). BC’s climate action strategy ignores these GHGs, which may amount to 120 – 140 million tonnes (mt) a year, twice as much as all the GHGs from activities in BC itself.

But there is methane in the coal, and natural gas IS methane, and every step of the way from wellhead and mine to the customer, some of the methane is lost. Sometimes it explodes out of a ruptured pipeline, or is deliberately burned, as it is with flaring. Much of it is lost in less visible ways from leaks and venting at the wells and mines, pipe­lines and railcars, processing facilities and storage piles and waste dumps. Across North America, the leaks are estimat­ed as between 5 and 15 per cent of production.

BC’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report estimates that these “fugitive emissions” amounted to 5.5 mt in 2007, or 8.2 per cent of the province’s total domestic emissions of 67.5 mt. Most of that is from natural gas production, and about 9 per cent is from coal. It is largely ignored and un­controlled.

The scale of the problem is also severely understated. Methane packs all of its climate changing punch up front – with a 20 year greenhouse effect which is 72 times that of CO2. Considered this way, BC’s fugitive emissions from natural gas and coal are closer to 14 per cent of BC’s total domestic emissions, not 8.2 per cent.

The implications are compelling – to reduce the green­house effect of Earth’s atmosphere as quickly as possible, we should be giving greater emphasis to reducing meth­ane emissions because of their higher short term im­pact.

Pipeline Ruptures

On July 12, 2010, Robert Adams, an Enbridge VP, told a US House committee that “Safety and protection of the public and environment are our highest priorities…we hold this as a core value."

The rest of his testimony had been directed at limiting expansion of pipeline inspection programmes.

On July 25, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured near Bat­tle Creek, Michigan, spilling more than a million gallons (3,785 cubic metres) of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River. It is the largest land-based pipeline spill in North America.

In January, six months earlier, Enbridge had been warned by regulators that its corrosion monitoring in this pipeline did not comply with regulations. Enbridge’s lengthy history of spills – 610 between 1999 and 2008 in the US – and many other environmental and safety violations – 545 of them in 2007 alone, were cited in a case brought by the state of Wisconsin, which cost Enbridge $1.1 million.

Enbridge is under intense scrutiny in British Columbia because of its Northern Gateway proposal – a pair of pipe­lines from Alberta to Kitimat, one of which would carry tar sands bitumen to Kitimat. Tankers would then transport the bitumen to markets on the Pacific Rim – if the huge ships make it safely out of Douglas Channel and through Hecate Strait.

Enbridge is not unique. Most of BC’s pipelines have ruptured. The causes include manufacturing defects, cor­rosion, machine operators, and landslides. The pipeline industry is quick to divert attention from its own culpabil­ity, pointing at third-party causes of pipeline incidents. But Canada’s National Energy Board reports that most ruptures are caused by corrosion.

These incidents are avoidable in almost all cases, by appropriate design and engineering, and with disciplined inspection and “integrity management,” an industry term. When the real core value of a pipeline company is a happy shareholder, then cost-cutting and “risk-management” and lip-service trump safe operation of a pipeline.

Meanwhile, the slow drip of “fugitive emissions” hap­pens in the background, out of sight, but also with environ­mental consequences.

Fugitive Emissions from Natural Gas

Natural gas production in BC’s northeast reached 33.1 million cubic metres in 2009 and is certain to increase in years to come. As production increases, so will fugitive emissions.

Gas is routinely flared and vented. When it is flared, the emissions are mostly CO2; when vented, it is natural gas – methane – with its greater greenhouse effect. British Columbia now requires that routine flaring cease by 2016.

The BC Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report lists a mul­titude of other sources of lost gas – releases throughout the production, processing, and transportation systems. Shrinkage, measuring discrepancies, and generic “losses” are also listed. It is a step in the right direction that BC is now attempting to account for these emissions, but ac­countability is still some way off.

At 5 mt per year, fugitive GHG emissions from BC’s natural gas production are 7.4 per cent of the province’s do­mestic emissions of 67.3 mt. That’s the GHG equivalent of adding a million cars onto BC’s roads.

Fugitive Emissions from Coal

Methane forms and is retained in coal. Once the coal is broken out of the ground, whether by open-pit or under­ground mining, the methane starts to “desorb” and evapo­rate. Some fugitive methane is also released from exposed material left behind in a mine, and from the waste rock.

Quantifying this fugitive methane from coal is chal­lenging. The US EPA calculated global emissions from coal as between 19 and 57 mt. BC’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report estimates that about 9per cent of BC’s fugitive emis­sions, or just under 500,000 tonnes of GHGs, come from coal – that’s the GHG effect of 100,000 more cars on the road.

That too is about to increase. Driven by record high prices for metallurgical coal, at least thirteen proposed mines are at various stages of exploration and permitting in BC. Teck alone expects to be producing 33 mt by 2013.

The coal targeted for mining by the proposed Raven Underground Coal Project on Vancouver Island contains between 1.75 and 3 m3 of “Liberated Methane” per tonne. This is the methane which will desorb from the coal once it is mined. At a production rate of 1.5 million tonnes of coal per year, fugitive methane emissions will be between 1786 and 3061 tonnes, equivalent to 128,558 – 220,385 tonnes of CO2 per year, or 4.4 million tonnes over the 20 year life of the mine. Another 881,539 cars.

It’s a Choice: Avoidable or Inevitable?

The pipeline industry could reduce its ruptures – if it chose to do so, or if it was forced by regulation. Fugitive emissions are a sizeable leakage and release of methane and carbon dioxide that is only beginning to be understood and measured. BC’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report is an en­couraging beginning – we cannot begin to solve a problem until we understand it.

But the real greenhouse gas problems are not the rup­tures or the fugitive emissions, they are our reliance on the hydrocarbons to power our society. That problem we do understand. Solving it is a political, economic, and envi­ronmental challenge we confront against fierce odds, but confront it we must.

***

Arthur Caldicott is a writer and activist on energy issues and a frequent contributor to the Watershed Sentinel.

[From WS Sept/Oct 2010]

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