#prayAn Empire of Dying Wells
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/diversified-energy-natural-gas-wells-methane-leaks-2021/We decided to see for ourselves what Hutson’s plans might mean for the climate by visiting 44 well sites owned by Diversified. We used state databases to find accessible wells on public land in three states. Then we borrowed a $100,000 industry standard GF320 camera—designed to spot methane—from its manufacturer, Teledyne FLIR. One of us got trained and certified to use it, and the other operated a handheld gas detector.
The results were worrisome. We found methane leaks at most of the places we visited. Some sites showed signs of maintenance in recent months, but others looked more or less abandoned. We saw access roads choked by vegetation, machinery buried under vines and weeds, oil dripping onto the ground, and steel doors rusted off their hinges
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Left unburned, natural gas consists mostly of methane, which is much better at trapping heat. Released into the air, a ton of methane will cause at least 80 times more warming over the next 20 years than a ton of carbon dioxide. That’s one reason controlling methane is among the cheapest and quickest ways to slow climate change and limit the wildfires, heat waves, rising seas, and droughts it’s unleashing. According to one recent estimate, putting a lid on human-caused methane emissions could prevent as much as one-third of the warming expected in the next few decades.