期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2014
卷号：111
期号：17
页码：6237-6242
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1316546111
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The identification and quantification of methane emissions from natural gas production has become increasingly important owing to the increase in the natural gas component of the energy sector. An instrumented aircraft platform was used to identify large sources of methane and quantify emission rates in southwestern PA in June 2012. A large regional flux, 2.0-14 g CH4 s-1 km-2, was quantified for a [~]2,800-km2 area, which did not differ statistically from a bottom-up inventory, 2.3-4.6 g CH4 s-1 km-2. Large emissions averaging 34 g CH4/s per well were observed from seven well pads determined to be in the drilling phase, 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater than US Environmental Protection Agency estimates for this operational phase. The emissions from these well pads, representing [~]1% of the total number of wells, account for 4-30% of the observed regional flux. More work is needed to determine all of the sources of methane emissions from natural gas production, to ascertain why these emissions occur and to evaluate their climate and atmospheric chemistry impacts.
关键词：unconventional gas ; greenhouse gas ; hydraulic fracturing
