Burping oil and gas infrastructure

Gas flame

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700 Swanston Street LAB14
Parkville, VIC 3010

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Caitlin McGrane

caitlin.mcgrane@unimelb.edu.au

T: +61 3 9035 9458

Over the past decade research has emerged from the U.S. that methane emissions from American unconventional oil and gas could be much higher than anticipated. What do we know about methane emissions from Australian unconventional oil and gas, and more specifically from coal seam gas?

Some American studies concluded that more than 10% of American unconventional gas production is inadvertently emitted to the atmosphere.  Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas and in the short term a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Recently the U.S. EPA has adjusted its figures upwards to 1.4% of production and U.S. President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau have agreed to drastically reduce methane emissions from oil and gas. The Australian government has not revised its figure, at 0.5% of production. The oil and gas industry itself claims it is as low as 0.1%.

The seminar dives into what is known about methane emissions from the Australian coal seam gas developments and what is not known. It will cover how methane emissions are reported, how they have been measured until today, why that may not be representative for the actual emissions and why Australia should care.

This seminar will elaborate on Melbourne Energy Institute's report Review of current and future methane emissions from Australian unconventional oil and gas production commissioned by the Australia Institute.

About the speaker

Dimitri is from the Netherlands, but has been living in Australia for the last 8 years. He graduated from the University of Utrecht with an MSc in geology/geophysics and has been working as a geoscientist for Shell for 11 years in the Netherlands and Australia. He now returns to academic life in pursuit of a PhD researching the climate impact of fugitive emissions of the fossil fuel industry, and unconventional gas in particular. In his free time he can be seen cycling in the Dandenongs.

Dmitri

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