Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Abstract

The proliferation of unconventional natural gas drilling has brought considerable recent attention to the possible impacts that this new technology may have on greenhouse gas emissions. In Pennsylvania, estimates of these possible impacts are very difficult to accurately assess in large part due to the highly uncertain contribution from legacy abandoned and orphaned gas (AOG) wells. This paper outlines our work in establishing a methodology for measuring the methane leak rate from AOG wells in Western Pennsylvania. The theory and methodology of an enclosure method for measuring the methane mass leak rate from one AOG natural gas well is described. Summary data for four other measurements and three other wells is presented. The goal of this work is to take the first steps towards an accurate determination of the contribution of AOWs to anthropogenic methane emissions in Pennsylvania.

Comments

This is an open access article published by and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC BY 3.0

Sourced from the published version of record cited below.

Journal of Scientific and Industrial Metrology was published by iMedPub Ltd. This article is posted on AFIT Scholar in accordance with the Creative Commons license, and the iMedPub Ltd copyright guidelines.

Source Publication

Journal of Scientific and Industrial Metrology

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