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Measuring Emissions from Oil and Natural Gas Well Pads Using the Mobile Flux Plane Technique

Literature Reference
Peer Reviewed Literature
Authors

Rella, C.W., Tsai, T.R., Botkin, C.B., Crosson, E.R. and Steele, D.

Presented at

Environmental Science & Technology (2015), vol. 49, p. 4742-4748, doi:10.1021/acs.est.5b00099

Abstract

We present a study of methane emissions from oil and gas producing well pad facilities in the Barnett Shale region of Texas, measured using an innovative ground-based mobile flux plane (MFP) measurement system, as part of the Barnett Coordinated Campaign. Using only public roads, we measured the emissions from nearly 200 well pads over 2 weeks in October 2013. The population of measured well pads is split into well pads with detectable emissions (N = 115) and those with emissions below the detection limit of the MFP instrument (N = 67). For those well pads with nonzero emissions, the distribution was highly skewed, with a geometric mean of 0.63 kg/h, a geometric standard deviation of 4.2, and an arithmetic mean of 1.72 kg/h. Including the population of nonemitting well pads, we find that the arithmetic mean of the well pads sampled in this study is 1.1 kg/h. This distribution implies that 50% of the emissions is due to the 6.6% highest emitting well pads, and 80% of the emissions is from the 22% highest emitting well pads.