Judge Gives Gas Leak Evacuees Longer to Return

The site of the Aliso Canyon gas leak.

“I really hope now for greater oversight”, says Stephen Conley, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis and co-author of the study.

In addition to providing real-time air quality data from the leak site to state regulators, the measurements will let researchers check the accuracy of greenhouse gas measurements by remote sensing systems, such as satellites. Research published this month shows that the USA may be responsible for between 30 and 60 percent of the growth in emissions since 2002.

The total methane released weighed the equivalent of two aircraft carriers and at its peak it discharged enough gas to fill a balloon the size of the Rose Bowl every day. Residents such as Taylor experienced nosebleeds attributed to gas exposure. “It released nearly 100,000 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere”.

Lawmakers on local, state, and federal levels learned that regulation over the Aliso Canyon storage facility and the wells had been lax and no contingency plans for such breaches or other disasters were in place.

“The Division of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) determined last week that the leak has been permanently stopped, and weeks of air-quality monitoring data and scientific analysis from independent air and health agencies – including the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, CalEPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Air Resources Board and South Coast Air Quality Management District – demonstrate there is no environmental or health reason for any further delay in enabling residents to return home”.

Wearing gas masks, protestors attend a hearing over the gas leak. In fact, the methane output of the Aliso Canyon blowout, “temporarily created the largest known anthropogenic point source of CH4 in the USA, effectively doubling the leak rate of all other sources in the Los Angeles Basin combined”, the paper notes.

In a separate filing Wednesday, the utility companies said, “Establishing a methodology for measuring emissions from such unusual events is challenging and unique, as ARB [the California Air Resources Board] has recently recognized in discussing the limitations of the aerial surveys over the Aliso Canyon storage facility”.

Furthermore, just eight out of 8,000 United States natural gas producers voluntarily disclose methane emissions, forcing the EPA to cobble together research from a variety of sources.

The disaster will substantially affect California’s ability to meet greenhouse gas emission targets for the year, the researchers noted. Now, researchers say it may have been the worst methane leak in USA history.

“Its biggest legacy will be in displacing thousands of people”, Jackson said.

Such a leak can also overwhelm a year’s worth of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

The leak first reported October 23 at the Aliso Canyon storage facility near Porter Ranch released the greenhouse gas equivalent of 572,000 cars in a year, the report said.

She said there is a risk that making large investments in the improvement and expansion of natural gas infrastructure may be setting the US on a trajectory of increased fossil fuel consumption.

Attention is now being directed towards what lessons can be learnt with regards to the infrastructure used in in the U.S. natural gas industry.

In response to questions from InsideClimate News, SoCal Gas spokeswoman Tammy Taylor said in an email, “The statement refers to the fact that there is no generally agreed upon method to measure emissions from catastrophic events”. “Methane is a significant player in the short term, but carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of climate change”.