Study: Methane leaks from gas drilling not huge

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Drilling and fracking for natural gas don't seem to spew immense amounts of the greenhouse gas methane into the air, as has been feared, a new study says.

The findings bolster a big selling point for natural gas, that it's not as bad for global warming as coal. And they undercut a major environmental argument against fracking, a process that breaks apart deep rock to recover more gas.

The results, which generally agree with earlier Environmental Protection Agency estimates, were published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

About 90 percent of the study funding came from nine energy companies that drill for natural gas with the rest coming from an environmental group. But study authors said they controlled how the research was done and how the wells were chosen for study. And even Robert Howarth of Cornell University, one of the scientists who first raised the methane leak alarm, calls the results "good news."

The study found that during the process of extracting natural gas from the ground, total leakage at the study sites was 0.42 percent of all produced gas. That is a bit less than what the EPA suggested is the national average.

While methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising since 2007, federal scientists say they've found no sign that gas or oil drilling is contributing because the methane emissions come from a different part of the globe.

Some environmental groups that oppose fracking said the industry funding of the $2.3 million study presented a conflict. But Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences and an atmospheric scientist who has researched methane, disagreed. Cicerone said the authors represent "some of the very best experts around the country. It doesn't matter who is paying these people. They're going to give you the straight scoop."

http://xfinity.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20130916/US-SCI-Fracking-Methane/