Gas flares at Cuadrilla’s fracking site at Preston New Road near Blackpool, 2 November 2018. Photo: Cuadrilla Resources
Data from Cuadrilla’s fracking site near Blackpool has confirmed that the company vented the powerful greenhouse gas, methane, while it was testing the well last month.
According to monitoring by the British Geological Survey (BGS), methane concentrations at the Preston New Road site peaked several times at about 400% above typical levels.
Cuadrilla released its own methane monitoring reports this week and said in a statement there had been three short spikes in the records in mid-January 2019:
“this was a controlled release of methane through the flare during the well testing phase.”
The gas failed to burn, the company said, and was emitted into the atmosphere.
The well test, which sought to measure the flow rate of shale gas, followed a problematic period of fracking last year. The company said it fully fracked just 5% of the well, blaming the rules on induced earth tremors. Despite this, Cuadrilla said gas had flowed at a peak rate of more than 200,000 standard cubic feet per day.
Venting unburned methane is prohibited in the environmental permit for Preston New Road “except where necessary for safety reasons”.
Nick Mace, Cuadrilla’s environmental manager, said the releases were “very low in absolute volume” and short-term spikes in data were “not uncommon because of background methane”. He said there were no health consequences from what he described as “very short-term emissions of methane at these low concentrations”.
DrillOrDrop twice asked Cuadrilla what volume of methane had been released into the atmosphere. The company has not replied.
Preston New Road, 15 February 2019. Photo: Ros Wills
Data details
Cuadrilla’s monitoring reports, compiled by the consultancy GGS, contained graphs but not the raw data.
The British Geological Survey (BGS), however, published round-the-clock sampling results from its separate monitoring project carried out with the University of Manchester.
The BGS said the typical methane concentrations at the Preston New Road site were 1,857-2,544 parts per billion (ppb).
During the period 1 December 2018-17 January 2019, the BGS recorded concentrations of methane exceeding 10,000ppb four times on two dates. Methane exceeded 9,000ppb nine times on a total of three days, and exceeded 8,000ppb 19 times on a total of four days.
None of the 68,604 BGS readings were as low as 1,857ppb, the bottom of the typical range. More than 3,573 readings, about 5%, were above the top of the typical range.
Some of the peaks were for a matter of minutes but there were periods which exceeded typical levels for at least an hour.
The BGS has conceded that the south easterly wind direction during December 2018 did not help monitoring emissions from the shale gas site. But in January, the wind direction meant that the sampled air had passed directly above.
According to the BGS, the results showed “clear enhancement in methane concentrations, relative to baseline (pre-operational) conditions”.
A report on the BGS research said the enhanced levels of methane happened during periods of relatively high wind speed and were not associated with increased concentrations of carbon dioxide. This is key because higher levels of carbon dioxide would indicate that methane from the well was being burned in the flare.
According to the BGS report, methane levels peaked in the period 11-17 January 2019 and on 7 December 2018.
The report concluded that the source of the methane appeared to be intermittent and episodic. But it said it was difficult to say whether the variation in methane concentrations was because the source strength changed or because the wind speed and direction varied.
It concluded:
“the absence of concurrent enhancements in carbon dioxide concentration suggest that the observed emissions took the form of non-combusted methane”.
It added:
“All the available evidence indicates that these were as a result of emissions of non-combusted methane from the site.”
“Non-combustible mix”
Methane chart from GGS report on monitoring at Preston New Road shale gas site on behalf of Cuadrilla
Cuadrilla confirmed in its statement this week that it had pumped nitrogen gas into the Preston New Road well to lift the shale gas and stimulate flow rates – known as a nitrogen lift.
The company said for a short period the nitrogen and methane formed a non-combustible mix in the flare at Preston New Road. Cuadrilla said:
“the flare pilot light was ignited to try and combust the mixture and propane was also added for the same purpose, but the methane and nitrogen gas mixture could not be burnt.”
The gases were released into the atmosphere.
Cuadrilla expressed its data in parts per million (ppm) and said the highest spike was 30.5ppm. It said this was “less than half of the highest level recorded during the baseline period”.
On another occasion, in October 2018, Cuadrilla said methane spikes were linked to emissions from a storage tank.
Problems with venting
In the short-term, methane warms the planet by 86 times more than carbon dioxide, making it a potent greenhouse gas.
Venting and other fugitive methane emissions from well sites, could, if high enough, negate the carbon benefits of gas, compared with coal.
The industry organisation, UK Onshore Oil and Gas, says on its website:
“Flaring and venting are only used when absolutely necessary”
It added that both flaring and venting release greenhouse gases, sulphur dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.
Earlier this month, DrillOrDrop asked the Environment Agency (EA) whether there had been venting from the Preston New Road well.
The EA said it would treat our question as a Freedom of Information request and it has not yet replied. But, we understand that the EA confirmed in response to an FOI from Mike Hill, a Chartered Engineer who lives near Preston New Road, that there had been venting at the site in November 2018.
Reaction
Mr Hill has been calling for a more comprehensive and more extensive monitoring programme by the regulators, including the BGS and EA, since 2012.
He detailed this in Briefing Notes to ministers at the then Department for Energy and Climate Change, outlining a system that would be wind direction independent and entirely independent of the operators with real time publishing of data to the web.
He said today the BGS data did not include levels of other gases, which from peer reviewed studies, are likely when fracking. There is a real possibility that venting could have also have released radon, sulphur dioxide or BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene), he told DrillOrDrop. There are known carcinogens amongst them, he said.
Mr Hill said:
“I suspected cold venting long before the Environment Agency admitted this because, ironically with such poor recoverability and inefficient fracking, then the need to burn the gases at 800 deg C+ becomes much more difficult.
“The BGS report admits that its monitoring was not particularly effective unless the wind happened to be blowing in a certain direction.
“When the wind was in that direction, the BGS saw a significant increase in methane levels, up to 400%.
“Bearing in mind methane is a much more damaging greenhouse gas than CO2, then these fugitive emissions could easily wipe out entirely all the benefits of gas over coal, as has been studied in the US. This would, in effect, make shale gas “dirtier” than coal in terms of greenhouse gas impact, the exact opposite of what the government tells us.
“The increase in methane also begs the question what other potentially very dangerous gases are being released and in what quantities? Is this happening much more than we realise when the wind is not “blowing in the right direction?
“The risk to the population downwind increases significantly with venting. Places including Wrea Green, Kirkham, Wesham, Elswick and Roseacre are all very much in the firing line.
“Without effective plume distribution modelling and an independent air emissions monitoring system similar to the one I proposed in 2012 then we are clearly operating in an opaque environment and one that is not making use of science, as the energy minister, Claire Perry, suggested.
“We are literally and metaphorically putting our fingers in the air and hoping the wind in not blowing in our direction from the fracking pad.
“This is an absurd situation and it makes me frustrated because I predicted this and indeed the earthquakes issue some seven years ago and told the government. and public so in meetings. The government listened but did not act. There is a real possibility that the children of the local schools and local residents are having their health put at risk.
“I am not stating that the risks are high or that Cuadrilla has vented BTEX or other gases.
“But we do need independent evidence that it has not done so and we do need a system that can detect these gases so that precautionary measures up to and including evacuation can be made at local schools and areas as and when required. Certainly, the topic is worth additional investigation.”
A spokesperson for the local campaign organisation, Preston New Road Action Group, said:
“The recent spikes in methane are of major concern to the residents living close to the site at Preston New Road. Even after only a partial frack we are seeing impacts on the air we breathe. We should be reducing gases that contribute to climate change rather than increasing them. We need to be protecting our environment for the generations to come, proceeding with fracking will not help with this.”
Updated 2/3/2019 with reaction quotes
Categories: Research
DRILL OR DROP? 
30.5ppm = 30,500 ppb. That’s an astonishing concentration, not one I’ve seen ever. Even the methane plumes leaking through the ice in the Arctic are 2.5 to 10ppm. Then Cuadrillas admits their 30.5ppm reading is less than half of other readings during a “baseline period”, whatever that means.
Consider that the background 1850ppb CH4 is over double the 1750 baseline used for proper climate change reportage, when it was 500ppb-750ppb CH4 depending on quoted sources. The equivalent global warming effect of that 1850ppb (or 1.85ppm) is like adding another 160ppm of CO2. {Over a decade each molecule of CH4 gas has 86x warming potential of CO2 – thus current 413ppm of CO2, added to 1.85ppm of CH4 x86 = 160, giving 573ppm CO2 equivalent} Adding in water vapour and NO2 and other effects, and we currently have something like 590ppm equivalent of CO2 warming. When it gets to 1200ppm CO2, 2/3rds of the clouds disappear and we’ll get another 8*C warming, a new report this week has calculated.
Consider that US calculations show that rogue emissions of methane from production fracking wells of over 3.5% means fracked gas has worse greenhouse gas emissions than coal. The US average leakage rate in their fracking wells was found in 2016 to be 11%.
Whilst these releases from one test well are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, Cuadrilla and INEOS et al have wet dreams about there being 40,000 of these things over the north of England.
The madness of fools, the biggest suicide trip ever, just for the sake of an 18 month return on an investment. If it turns out for our species the way I expect, it will be justly deserved.
Mark Bevis, I’m afraid that you have used faulty data in your post. Fugitive methane rates are calculated at around 1.3% by a wide array of academic papers. The IPCC has concurred with this analysis.
You also base your comment on a “global warming effect” attributable to ch4 and co2, when none has been verified. No atmospheric models that rely heavily on high sensitivities to GHG have been accurately predictive, nor have they backtested accurately. So, we may posit that there is a global warming effect associated with these gasses, but we have very little idea of the sensitivity (if any) associated with that effect.
The UK would be fortunate to have 40,000 wells (translating to perhaps 8,000 well pads, with an average of maybe 500-1000 producing at a single point in time. As this would dramatically reduce the country’s co2 and ch4 footprint by substituting domestic for foreign gas. It would also mean a large new industry for the struggling economy, greater tax revenue, more jobs, and increased energy security.
Wind and solar are clearly not the answer for the world. Their energy densities mean that they take use massive amount of environmental and economic resources for limited amounts of randomly intermittent power. No one feels the adverse impact of these technologies like the poor – a very difficult situation. If the UK is serious about cutting its GHG emissions it will promote more nuclear gen. and it will work furiously to create more economic CCS.
https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/
This looks like it’s straight from the climate change denier’s playbook Bob and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the IPCC’s warnings about continued FF development. Please give the IPCC sources that support this argument. The nuclear case is interesting but overlooks the total costs in terms of the need for sunstantial grid infrastructures, decommissioning and legacy by-pruducts. Poorer countries can’t face those. Fusion power maybe – in the longer term.
Rather than call names, why don’t you provide information that proves that imported gas creates fewer emissions than domestic gas? Or provide information that proves a causal relationship between GHG and climate change. Or provide information to explain why it is that over the earth’s history when co2 levels were magnitudes of order higher than today, the climate was cooler than we are experiencing now? Nuclear is expensive, and it may take time for it to work in some places, but it’s a pretty good option all things considered. I agree that poorer nations will need to hold onto FF for longer. http://report.mitigation2014.org/drafts/final-draft-postplenary/ipcc_wg3_ar5_final-draft_postplenary_chapter7.pdf
Bob, you’ll find a massively comprehensive database of responses to pretty much every climate change deniers questions and claims here https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy It’s been produced by climate change experts, rather than people who just repeat what they’ve read in the press or a blog somewhere, or merely those who have a financial interest in maintaining the current fossil fuel status quo. I presume you’d rather believe the former rather than the latter.
More questions than answers as usual from the fracking industry and it’s Gold Standard Monitors!
Was the quoted incident when propane was added to the nitrogen and methane gas cocktail that didn’t want to combust the same incident that Egan and company claimed was a strong flow of Shale Gas by any chance?
Is cold venting of unidentified gaseous byproduct still proceeding, the flare stacks are still there!
Is the windsock lottery still in action! Could do with windsocks at all public gathering places like schools, sports grounds, entertainment centres etc if it’s remotely possible airborne carcegenic compounds are blowing around the Fylde! Nobody trustworthy has yet stood up and promised they aren’t and haven’t!
I think we have just seen the end of fracking in the UK.
All bar the shouting that is.
And I am sure there will be a lot of that to come.
Yes Phil, and the children are coming…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/01/youth-climate-strikers-we-are-going-to-change-the-fate-of-humanity
…..no more lies from ponzi wannabees with yachts on order…..throw them out with the dirty bathwater; your time is over 😉
Hi Sherwulfe, yes, many of us have been saying this for years and now even our children are no longer fooled by the empty words and even emptier rhetoric spouted here on behalf of their fossil fuel industry masters and in our dreadfully compromised government whilst they do absolutely nothing to change the jealously protected fossil fuel monopoly over energy resources.
As for evidence we only need to look around us and the bizarre weather events and extreme fluctuations across the entire world to see that. What these recidivists want is for some extended verification of all these climate change indicators that will take decades and be argued on every forum and still nothing will be done, except for some minor window dressing whilst the suicidal money making machine grinds on and on and on.
Another day in Paradise:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-wildfires-that-raged-across-the-world-in-the-2018-wildfire-season.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/weather/extreme-weather-us-uk-australia-gbr-intl/index.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/climate-change-colder-winters-global-warming-polar-vortex/
But if ever they actually get around to actually doing anything about it, and that is very much in doubt, that will be far far too late, and by then the Earth will have changed beyond recognition and billions will die of the effects of starvation, temperature extremes, epidemic disease, radiation from the permanent ozone holes, catastrophic water and air pollution, rising acidified sea levels and unprecedented floods, snow, drought, devastating storms and ecological collapse in the sixth global extinction event.
By the words of the PR anti anti representatives we see here, we can see how little, if at all, that even matters to the fossil fuel fools, only money and the furtherance of their employers industrial hegemony is of any import whatsoever. We see what they do in every negative situation, they prevaricate, divert, pick out single words or phrases and blow that out of proportion as if that was the only thing said, deny deny deny, attack the writer, attempt to discredit the evidence or better, the supplier of the evidence and it all is intended to descend into an ego fest and attempt obfuscate any real issue.
The children are standing up to be counted and they are the people who will inherit this abysmally myopic dream of greed and avarice that is a nightmare to everyone else and it is us and our children who will suffer the consequences.
But we are not surprised are we ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we have seen that and many other weak and desperate memes trotted out with boring regularity right here.
Interesting times ahead for all of us.
Well well, or not well well, if you see what i mean, its Sunday again folks, 3rd March 2019, it is the nineteenth frack free Sunday in fact, since we were promised all those whooping cries of gas! gas! gas!
The world seems at last to be coming to reluctant terms with the very visible effects of climate change deterioration, hotly disputed by the deniers of course, but it cannot be denied now try as they might, just look at the evidence from across the world, snow and then fires in February in UK must be a first.
So we must change the way we do everything and that change must be now, not tomorrow, not 2050, not never, it must be now or we may not be able to hand a viable future to our next generations and we see how little they trust the politicians now. They will not forgive us for trashing their planet and i for one amongst many others will not let that happen if we can help stop it and return to some ecological and climate stabilisation sanity.
This is Roger Waters from his Radio Kaos album, which has some things to say about the coming changes, with greatest apologies for some small appropriate alterations to words of course:
Roger Waters
“The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)”
I used to think the world was fracked
Rarely threw my hat into the crowd
I felt I had used up my quota of yearning
Used to look in on the children at night
In the glow of their Donald Duck light
And frighten myself with the thought of my little ones burning
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turning
Satellite buzzing through the endless night
Exclusive to moonshots and world title fights
Jesus Christ imagine what it must be earning
Who is the strongest, who is the best
Who holds the aces, the East or the West
This is the crap our children are learning
But oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turning
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
Now the satellite’s confused
‘Cos for Friday sprites
The airwaves are full of compassion and light
And his silicon heart warmed
To the sight of a billion candles burning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
Oo, oo, oo, the tide is turning
The tide is turning really
I’m not saying that the battle is won
But on Friday with all those kids in the sun
Wrested technology’s sword from the hand of the
Bore Lords
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is turning
The tide is turning investor
The tide is turning.
—-
Thank you Roger Waters and apologies for the slight alterations.
Have a good peaceful Sunday with families and friends and perhaps think of the future our children and future generations will inherit, and act accordingly.
Well said
We don’t want it
We don’t want the pollution
Or damage
The earths gonna burn with these idiots
All of it is against global warming and the stuff they are saying they are protecting the earth in press-schools-tv to protect ozone layers
All lies the government are or have so far let them continue
If they check the streams near the site
They’ll be radioactive I bet 😡
They sneaked waste in there too
You didnt compute that these are very intermittent spikes associated with nitrogen mixing Mark Bevis? 30ppm = 0.003%. That cannot be burned as its not a high enough concentration.
Yes methane is bad to release, but this is a vanishingly small amount compared to any local cows/sheep, ponds, that emit methane all the time, rather than for a for a few minutes. Hardly something to get in a tizzy about,in a global context.
You’re talking about a carbon cycle Anon – ‘surface’ carbon that has been sequestered in organisms, plants and other biological processes (in recent years) then returned to the atmosphere. Carbon released to the atmosphere from ancient deposits is a different matter altogether. On a global scale the FF issue is huge … better not to expand this kind of activity.
D&D and the Anti-Frackers are getting desperate!
A combination of renewable and fossil fuels is the answer…
And you are trying to say renewables don’t cause long term climate changing statistics, from the materials, manufacture and transportation to specific sites for electrical generation!! What about heating, cooking and the derivatives required, the world is not ready to deal with sustainable life without fossil fuels…
Oh yes it is! Do or die…
As well as the pertinent comments above, I’d like to know how Cuadrilla are going to persuade their investors that the great gas flow results that they claimed were based on actual data.
When faced with the fact there wasn’t a safety situation to justify cold venting, the Company seems to play down the volume of gas as being small and sporadic. Yet on the other hand their formal statement to investors talked about sustained flow rates of 100,000 cubic feet per day and peak rates of 200,000. The report didn’t say “we had a few tiny bursts of gas and from that we deduced…” and is clearly saying that they flowed gas for days on end (straight to the atmosphere as it turns out). The BGS data would indicate that that simply was not the case.
This dodgy industry is failing to gain the trust of the general public, but it should also be worrying about losing the trust of its investors.
Once again, thank you Ruth for your excellent investigative journalism.
Good that there was an independent monitoring group gathering this data. Is that the seperate monitoring that Cuadrilla has said wasn’t necessary because they would be doing it themselves?
It wasn’t very long ago that the antis were slagging off the BGS stating that they were Government run, working for oil and gas etc etc. Are you now saying they are are independent and okay?
There you go again. Trying to use the ‘antis’ term as if its all group think. Why shoot yourself in the foot with your own group think Paul? I think for myself but I might go back to calling you all gas heads in the spirit of such name calling.
While it is true methane CH4 is much more potent as a GHG than CO2 they are much easier and break down very fast and more readily than CO2 when exposed to sun light radiation in the upper atmosphere.
TW; why try and justify that which is wrong? Cuadrilla have released methane into the atmosphere which is not allowed under the environment permit.
How many more times do we put up with this blatant disregard for the ‘fools gold standards’, to perpetuate the myth that you can make money from nothing and at the same time crapping in our atmosphere?
Sure. It would be wrong and breaking the regulations if they have done so. However it seems they were allowed under the EA permit to cold vent a small amount under the circumstances.
My comment wasn’t meant to justify if Cuadrilla was actually breaking its permit intentionally.
Sorry to ruin your argument TW but it takes over a hundred years for atmospheric Methane to break down to negligible proportions during which time it is on average over 20 times more potent a ghg than CO2. During its first 20 years it is 82 times more potent. And what does it break down to? … CO2 (plus water vapour). Of course if we keep feeding CH4 into the atmosphere the 82 times potency plus (higher in its first few years) will be the over-riding impact.
So its immediate and long term effects for global warming are bad indeed and I’d say if anything it is methane and the methane feedbacks that are kicking in now that will be the major culprit for tipping us into catastrophic climate change.
Sure. But the feedback of warming from CH4 may cause more water vapour which will absorb atmospheric CO2 and come down as rain which will lock into soil and rock. This happens before and will bring thing back ro equilibrium again. Also warmth and CO2 will stimulate trees grass and algae growth which will absorb more CO2. Unabated burning fossil fuel is unviable and inevitably we must reduce our consumption but the eco and natural systems have many mechanisms to self regulate otherwise we wont exist.
Nice fairy tale TW. Now try getting up to speed with what is really going on… disequilibrium now trending towards a future equilibrium (perhaps) but of a kind we may not find recognisable. Australia has just recorded its hottest ever summer – likewise for our UK’s January and now February. Sure, the lobes of cold arctic jet streams are reaching further south too (predicted from the effects of accelerated arctic warming) which has meant cold records in some places as well. But high temperature extremes are outnumbering cold extremes by at least three to one – plotted across thousands of points around the globe. In terms of overall energy the earth’s thermodynamics are strained to the limit. The oceans have absorbed most of the heating so far. That looks about to change. This has to be taken more seriously.
Well said 👍👍
My point about the life span difference between CH4 and CO2 was to draw attention to the claims methane leak during extraction phase cause more ghg harm than burning coal.
Open cast mining or underground coal mine which need to be de-gas (release methane and sulfur dioxide before coal can be dug up) release alot of CH4 and other nasty gases during mining and that is on top of these ghg CO2 gas and nasty pollutants which are released during burning. It is therefore disingenuous of those who claim shale gas is more harmful than coal.
This is a story about nothing. Volumes of methane vented are insignificant and hardly a surprise. Drill well, shale contains methane, lift flow back fluid with N2, some methane is vented. Shock horror! Contribution to climate change = zero…..
True enough for this one instance but scale it up to full production then multiply by the thousands of wells that are needed to fulfill the strategic aims of the parent companies and investors then the picture changes … a lot.
Maybe. But not as much a the 100% renewables fairytales.
Those who claimed fracking shale gas is only compatible for climate change if carbon capture technology exist on the basis of CCC report will be very happy to hear there is now such technology insight. Maybe even able to replace renewables. Move over renewables.
https://www.thenewamerican.com
New carbon capture technology or even a renewable energy sources.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/energy/item/31613-carbon-dioxide-the-newest-form-of-renewable-energy
more myths and legends…..
Unfortunately yes. Among the saner comments there’s someone who points out that the writer has misread the research paper and hyped up his own ideas for the sake of a good story. But even if we achieve zero carbon energy at a future date some kind of invention like that, if not impossible, would be ideal and needed to draw down excessive CO2 – not used just to mask ongoing, careless use of fossil fuels.
Who is “we” PhilipP? If you mean UK then forget it, it makes no difference. If you mean the “world” it will never happen. population, aspiring middle classes, human nature. And none of them read DOD…
oh ye of little faith Paul….
“Drawn down excess carbon”??? That would be the plants tree grass algae and rain.
Grass land is one of the key regulator of CO2 and O2 production. It is not a coincidence that as soon as the appearance of green grass land appear life on land followed soon after.
Yes TW. That’s what happens at the surface of our natural carbon cycles. What they can’t cope with however is the gigatons of extra carbon molecules fed into the atmosphere from deep, ancient sources. You only need to look at the Keeling curve to see that has led to an accumulation in the atmosphere of CO2. Left to itself, nature would restore the balance eventually. We’re just not doing that. Hence the need to reverse the overdriven excess and finding away of recapturing.