Major Natural Gas Leak at Pennsylvania Facility Ends After 11 Days
Equitrans Midstream said it stopped the venting at a storage well after an estimated 100 million cubic feet per day of gas escaped into the atmosphere
Emissions from flaring, or burning of natural gas, methane and hydrogen sulphide associated with oil production, are rising.
Source: Bloomberg
A leak at a Pennsylvania natural gas facility that lasted 11 days released over 1 billion cubic feet of the fuel into the atmosphere, according to its owner.
The leak at the Rager Mountain Storage facility in Jackson Township was finally halted Thursday, Equitrans Midstream Corp. said. The company said a crew successfully flooded the storage well that was emitting gas through a 1 5/8-inch vent.
Equitrans’s preliminary and conservative estimate is that 100 million cubic feet of gas a day was released. That equates to a total of 15,800 to 20,300 metric tons of methane, according to BloombergNEF. The largest known methane release in the US occurred in 2015, where an estimated 97,100 tons was emitted over several months from a storage facility operated by a unit of Sempra Energy at Aliso Canyon, Los Angeles.