Howdy y’all! It was another busy month. Sharon and Charlie were in the field on the Gulf Coast documenting more methane emissions from Freeport LNG and Charlie was also in the New Mexico Permian doing the same with frontline groups. To wrap up the month, Sharon was at the Telluride Film Festival helping promote the new film This Is Not a Drill.

Telluride!

Sharon was at the Telluride Film Festival for the screening of Oren Jacoby’s new documentary This Is Not A Drill where she gained some new fans and helped spread the word about what we do and why we do it. This was the debut for the film and we will be sharing more info as it becomes available to the public.

We like this photo because it features a photobomb from one of the other stars of the movie, Rep. Justin J. Pearson of Memphis, who we got to work with again earlier this year when we went to Tennessee to document emissions at the xAI facility.

Our Work in the Media

Charlie was on the Lesser Known New Mexico podcast with host Laura Paskus talking about New Mexico’s failure to protect the environment and climate from the state’s oil and gas industry.

“We're more like a climate killer.  We can fix it. There is a robust environmental movement in New Mexico full of advocates and frontline leaders, we just need the state to start listening to us and uphold their commitments to protect New Mexico's natural legacy for current and future generations." 

Sharon has several quotes in this American Prospect piece on the state of methane regulations in the U.S.

“If people could see this with their bare eyes, none of this would be happening,” said Sharon Wilson, a fifth-generation Texan and director of Oilfield Witness, an organization that uses optical gas imaging cameras to expose the underreported pollution from oil and gas infrastructure. “They would have stopped it way back at the beginning of the fracking boom. Drilling in neighborhoods—they would have said, ‘Oh, hell no,’ and that would have been the end of it.”

Sharon was featured in a Laura Flanders story titled, “Louisiana Survived Katrina. Will it Survive the Petrochemical Industry?” which focused on the shrimp fisherman on the Gulf and our time working there on a shrimp boat documenting LNG emissions.

Japan Roundtable

Last month we released our report on our findings from our visit to Japan. This is a video of a roundtable discussion Miguel led while we were there.

Fieldwork

Sharon and Charlie were with Better Brazoria and Freeport Haven Project in Freeport surveying emissions from LNG facilities.

Manning Rollerson of Freeport Haven Project

This is video of what they found.

Charlie also did field work in Carlsbad concerning an operator who has applied for oil and gas drilling permits within city limits. This operator has a history of violating New Mexico’s environmental regulations and we hope to use our OGI data to show the Carlsbad City Council this company should not be issued any further permits based on their operating history in New Mexico.

Education

Sharon and Justin presented to the oil and gas team at Global Energy Monitor to talk about our work and opportunities to collaborate.

Our Writing

Jack wrote about “methane intensity” — the oil and gas industry’s favorite new way to mislead the public.

Operators may invest in new technologies to control methane at the same time that their production increases, and intensity may better reflect those investments. However, sustainability is not a participation trophy. The deteriorating climate of our planet does not care that new methane emissions are the result of higher production. All that matters is that there are new methane emissions. Focusing on intensity ignores this reality in favor of a corporatized form of sustainability that pretends that increased production justifies further environmental harm.

This review of the book Dark PR by Grant Ennis includes a quote from one of Justin’s past articles about why carbon capture is not a climate solution.

And he [Ennis] goes on the make the point, quoting Justin Mikulka, a LinkedIn contributor respected for his great insights into the US oil and gas industry

“Writing for DeSmog, a media site that exists to ‘clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science on climate change,’ Justin Mikulka explained, ‘Using carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels to extract oil and gas, which will then be burned and add more carbon to the atmosphere, is not a climate solution. It is, however, another explanation of why the oil industry is such a fan of carbon capture – because it enhances oil recovery and oil profits.

- Till the end of oil

The Oilfield Witness Team