The Climate Impact of US Offshore Oil and Gas Production
The combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas is the primary driver of contemporary climate change. Mitigation efforts must contend with the reality that fossil fuels will remain a large fraction of global energy use well into the 21st century. The climate impact of fossil fuels varies across fuel ty...
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| Other Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/176676 https://doi.org/10.7302/7525 |
| Summary: | The combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas is the primary driver of contemporary climate change. Mitigation efforts must contend with the reality that fossil fuels will remain a large fraction of global energy use well into the 21st century. The climate impact of fossil fuels varies across fuel types and within a fuel type. Variability in the latter is strongly driven by different practices and infrastructure across different production fields. The metric, carbon intensity (CI), reflects the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to energy and can be used to compare climate impacts of fuels. Policy and investment decisions can leverage knowledge of the carbon intensity of fuels produced in different locations to choose fuels that reduce climate impacts of current fossil fuel use. Oil and gas (O&G) production is a large source of greenhouse gases, emitted as carbon dioxide (CO2), from combustion operations, and methane (CH4), from fugitive leaks and intentional venting. Numerous studies have shown that inventory CH4 emissions from onshore fields tend to be underestimated in comparison to flux estimates calculated from atmospheric observations. However, observations of CH4 from offshore fields are sparse and few studies have incorporated existing observation-based updates to CH4 into CI calculations. This dissertation quantifies the greenhouse gas emissions from offshore O&G production using atmospheric observations and presents results as CI. First, we analyze a limited airborne sample of CH4 emissions from offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and evaluate the inventory. Next, we return to the Gulf to gather a larger and more representative sample of CH4, CO2, and nitrogen oxides (NOx=NO+NO2) emissions. We combine this data-set with all facility-level fluxes of CH4 gathered by previous studies to evaluate the inventory and calculate a CI. Finally, we extend our airborne campaign to the other offshore production basins in the US: offshore the North Slope in Alaska, Cook Inlet in Alaska, and offshore ... |
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