Howdy y’all! The past month we were out in the field documenting emissions in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Texas again. Unfortunately, wherever we go – from Texas to Tokyo – we find alarming amounts of oil and gas emissions.

Our Work in the Media

Inside Climate News published an article about the group that went to Japan to talk about the risks of LNG and quoted Sharon.

Sharon Wilson disagrees. She’s the director of Oilfield Witness, a nonprofit organization that uses specialized imaging equipment to detect emissions of methane—the top driver of climate change after carbon dioxide—and other hydrocarbons from oil and gas infrastructure.

“The oil and gas industry lied to you when they said LNG was clean energy,” Wilson, who also addressed the Diet on Jan. 30, said as she spoke before the body.

“But I’m not just going to tell you that, I’m going to show you,” Wilson said as she shared videos of methane and other pollution billowing from LNG terminals and other oil and gas infrastructure that she and others captured with optical gas imaging technology.

The work that led to Sharon and Miguel being invited to Japan was the trip to the Permian with Japan’s NHK TV. The documentary that features that visit is called “Blind Spots in Climate Measures.” This version is dubbed in English and Sharon and Miguel show up at minute 18.

Fieldwork

This month we were in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana using optical gas imaging to document more methane and volatile organic compound pollution from the oil and gas industry.

New Mexico

Charlie worked with frontline folks and the San Juan Citizens Alliance, surveying soil vapor extraction (SVE) sites in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. SVE is a technology used to clean up underground oil and gas spills. We documented some  emissions at the sites. Unfortunately, it seemed most of the SVE units were inoperable, or bypassed entirely. Charlie reported that they failed to find any recorded maintenance on these sites (information operators are required to record).

Image: Soil vapor extraction unit in San Juan Basin

El Paso, Texas

In late February, Oilfield Witness organized a field tour of the top polluters in El Paso, Texas. Charlie and Miguel brought the OGI camera to El Paso Electric’s fracked gas plant (Newman, Rio Grande, and Montana Vista) and to Marathon’s oil refinery, which is located right in the center of El Paso. Together, these four oil and gas infrastructure sites comprise the top polluters which drive El Paso’s pollution. In our tour, we met with residents living close to these sites. We showed them oil and gas pollution through the lens of our OGI camera, and interviewed them about their experiences.  We found substantial amounts of emissions—especially from the refinery and the Newman gas plant. The refinery as well as the gas plants are supplied by the Permian Basin oilfields. Videos will be released soon, stay tuned!

Image: Miguel at the El Paso Newman gas plant

Louisiana and Texas

Sharon and Charlie returned to the Gulf in Louisiana, which we first visited in October,  to document emissions from liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities. Sharon provides the details:

“We arrived in Cameron, LA and quickly recorded video of big emissions, despite swarms of mosquitoes, at the Sempra Hackberry LNG terminal. By the time we got to the boat dock to go film the Venture Global CP1 site, fog was moving in. We went out briefly and I captured a little video before deciding to wait until late the next morning. We arrived at the boat dock the next morning at about 10:30 but the fog was still hanging over the LNG site. Eventually we gave up and started the trip to Freeport, TX. But by the time we took the ferry and drove around the lake, the fog was lifting and I recorded a dense plume of uncombusted methane coming from the flare. The site was far away and our tripod malfunctioned so the videos don’t do justice to the amount of methane, VOCs and particulate matter coming from the flare.”

Image: Normal view of flare stack (no OGI)

Image: Same flare stack with OGI showing emissions

There was also an LNG tanker coming in to dock with the help of about 6 tug boats.

Image: LNG tanker being loaded for export to Europe.

Image: Shipping chart showing LNG ship on its way to Europe

Our Writing

Justin wrote about the impacts of the LNG industry on local communities and the environment based in part on our first visit to Louisiana.

“Puerto Libertad has a chance to remain a place like Cameron once was with “No pollution” and a thriving fishing industry. Ideally they will hear and heed the words of Mother Mary in Cameron, ‘Do not harm my children’ and will decide to protect what they have instead of letting foreign companies take it from them. When it comes to LNG facilities, local fishing communities have bad options: there is nothing to be gained and everything to lose.”

Video Work

After Miguel and Sharon captured optical gas imaging videos documenting the methane emissions from import terminals and gas power plants in Japan, we had footage from all of the points in the LNG lifecycle, from the wells in Texas to the LNG import terminals and power plants in Tokyo. In this video Sharon explains the emissions at every step in that process and makes it clear why when all of these emissions are included, the climate impact of LNG is worse than coal. As Sharon said in the Inside Climate News article quoted above when she explains why LNG is dirty fuel, “I’m not just going to tell you that, I’m going to show you.”

– Till the end of oil

The Oilfield Witness Team