California’s massive methane leak prompts action to capture it

Unlike the Porter Ranch leak, which gave rise to thousands of odor complaints by sickened residents nearby, no complaints have been reported about La Goleta. The system will either filter out some of the chemicals or burn off the gas. They’ve reported dizziness, nausea and nosebleeds, all of which have been blamed on the methane leak.

The Aliso Canyon leak was discovered October 23. It doesn’t stick around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it locks heat it into our atmosphere more efficiently. “We know this is a major incident and our goals are to continue to stop the leak and serve the community, period”. It supplies the natural gas for 14 power plants.

Conley has flown his plane all over the country measuring gas leaks.

In August, the EPA proposed its first-ever rules targeting methane emissions from new and modified oil and gas equipment and infrastructure.

The Aliso facility is an underground natural gas storage facility.

The Aliso Canyon leak involves just one of more than 100 wells at the facility, and it is not an easy one to shut down. We fly as close as is safe, seeing a plume almost 1,000 feet high under calmer wind conditions.

Until that’s done, the leak is letting potent methane gas into the air – sickening residents and instantly becoming the greatest source of air pollution in California.

The hillside Porter Ranch community of about 30,000 people in mostly single-family homes has grown considerably in the three decades since scenes in the movie “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” were filmed here. Fran Pavley said the first order of business is to stop the leak. The relief well drilling began on December 4 and has been taking place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though El Nino-driven storms have disrupted drilling operations in recent weeks. The gas company has said its insurance will cover more than $1 billion in costs.

California’s two Democratic senators are asking federal officials to investigate a methane leak at a Los Angeles-area natural gas storage facility. State Senator Pavley’s bills “mirror” Governor Jerry Brown’s emergency declaration last week, which also called for continuing the ban on gas injections and a deep look at the “long-term viability of the state’s natural gas facilities”, says the LA Times. “How can we make sure this kind of tragedy never happens again?” This is a massive disaster and it’s one that some environmental groups claim might have been prevented had state regulators required the older wells to be brought up to the same safety standards as new wells. “The design calls for a pipe to be installed in the area of the gas flow to capture a portion of the leaking gas and then carry it to separate units that will remove the fluids from the gas and then either incinerate it or filter the odorant out of it”, the gas company said. Michael Mizrahi, a spokesman for SoCalGas, said while the company fully realises that the leak has disrupted the lives of local residents and will have an environmental impact, it was doing its utmost to remedy the situation and was closely monitoring air quality in Porter Ranch.

Other measures include SB 876, to ensure that Southern California Gas will pay all housing, relocation and emergency response costs and prohibit the California Public Utilities Commission from allocating any of those costs to ratepayers.

Right now, as the leak enters its tenth week, the underground pressure has been reduced by half of its original rate, due to the gas escaping from the leak and other actions taken by SoCalGas – the company operating the facility – to withdraw gas in a controlled manner.