Description

We measured fluxes of methane, non-methane hydrocarbons, and carbon dioxide from natural gas well pad soils and from nearby undisturbed soils in eastern Utah. Methane fluxes varied from less than zero to more than 38,000 mg m-2 h-1. Fluxes from well pad soils were almost always greater than from undisturbed soils. Fluxes were greater from locations with higher concentrations of total combustible gas in soil and were inversely correlated with distance from well heads. Several lines of evidence show that the majority of emission fluxes (about 70%) were due to subsurface sources of raw gas that migrated to the atmosphere, with the remainder likely caused by re-emission of spilled liquid hydrocarbons. Total hydrocarbon fluxes in summer were only 27% as high as during winter, likely because soil bacteria consumed the majority of hydrocarbons during summer months, converting them to carbon dioxide. While this study shows that well pad soils are a meaningful hydrocarbon emission source at some wells, well pad soil emissions are not significant relative to the oil and gas industry overall. We estimate that well pad soils account for much less than 1% of total emissions of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons from the oil and gas industry in Utah's Uinta Basin.

Author ORCID Identifier

Seth Lyman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8493-9522

OCLC

1059131574

Document Type

Dataset

DCMI Type

Dataset

File Format

.csv

Publication Date

7-5-2017

Funder

US Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Land Management

US Dept. of Energy

Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America

Publisher

Utah State University

Award Number

US Dept. of Interior, Bureau of Land Management L13AC00292; US Dept. of Energy 12122-15

Methodology

see associated publication for collection and processing of data.

Location

Eastern Utah

Language

eng

Code Lists

See the ReadMe file for descriptions of parameters and variables.

Disciplines

Environmental Monitoring

License

Creative Commons License
This work has been identified with a Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Checksum

cdc187ace4a695b03952156667d441c3

Additional Files

ReadMe.txt (8 kB)
d15eb095a1b820193c103c6157789a2f

Final_SoilEmissDBase_anym_July2017.csv (143 kB)
MD5: 44ca44247fc498df6b6da826a66ecf22

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