Natural Gas Health and Environmental Hazards

See our print­able Nat­ur­al Gas Factsheet

Nat­ur­al gas is a fos­sil fuel that is often pro­mot­ed as “clean­er” than coal, but which has its own seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal haz­ards.  Nat­ur­al gas is NOT a “tran­si­tion” fuel.  Nat­ur­al gas extrac­tion threat­ens ecosys­tems from north­ern Alas­ka and Cana­da to the Gulf of Mex­i­co, includ­ing drilling on farms, pub­lic lands, forests and parks, in the Rocky Moun­tains and oth­er coal-field com­mu­ni­ties, off of U.S. coastal waters and pos­si­bly even under the Great Lakes. Deep drilling tech­nolo­gies such as “hydraulic frac­tur­ing” or “frack­ing” have recent­ly opened areas of the U.S. to drilling, leav­ing a lega­cy of ground­wa­ter pol­lu­tion. Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is the process of inject­ing water, salt, and a cock­tail of haz­ardous chem­i­cals deep under­ground to break open rock for­ma­tions from which nat­ur­al gas is extract­ed. Hydraulic frack­ing tech­niques threat­en com­mu­ni­ties fac­ing drilling oper­a­tions and down­stream com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing com­mu­ni­ties near “frac” waste­water treat­ment plants. This waste­water can con­tain radioac­tive mate­ri­als, high lev­els of salt that affects aquat­ic life, and car­cino­genic ele­ments and com­pounds such as arsenic and ben­zene.

Pipelines and com­pres­sor sta­tions add to the harms, cross­ing all sorts of ecosys­tems. Even water bod­ies like Lake Erie and the Long Island Sound have faced pro­pos­als to bury pipelines in under­wa­ter trench­es that involve stir­ring up tox­ic sen­ti­ment accu­mu­lat­ed on lake/sound floors.

Nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants are sig­nif­i­cant air pol­lu­tion sources, releas­ing haz­ardous air pol­lu­tants, glob­al warm­ing pol­lu­tion and fine par­tic­u­late matter.

Nat­ur­al gas is worse than coal for glob­al warming

While the smoke­stack emis­sions from gas-burn­ing pow­er plants are low­er than coal, gas is worse because of the leak­age from the wells to the pipelines and com­pres­sor sta­tions to the end-uses — since methane (the prin­ci­ple com­po­nent of nat­ur­al gas) is far more potent at heat­ing the atmos­phere than car­bon diox­ide (which is pro­duced when coal or gas are burned).

The newest sci­ence on methane’s glob­al warm­ing poten­tial shows that it’s far more potent than pre­vi­ous­ly thought:

Methane’s Glob­al Warm­ing Poten­tial (num­ber of times worse than CO2)

Over 100 years	Over 20 years	Source
21	72	U.S. EPA (oper­at­ing on the sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing from the 1990s; archive of EPA page using this old fig­ure as recent­ly as April 13, 2015)
25		U.S. EPA’s new reg­u­la­tions, pro­posed April 2013, effec­tive Jan. 1, 2014 (see Table 2) (based on 2007 IPCC data) EPA is know­ing­ly using this out­dat­ed GWP in its June 2016 Oil and Nat­ur­al Gas Rule and its August 2016 Land­fill Gas Rule sim­ply “to be con­sis­tent with and com­pa­ra­ble to key Agency emis­sion quan­tifi­ca­tion pro­grams such as the Inven­to­ry of Green­house Gas Emis­sions and Sinks (GHG Inven­to­ry), and the Green­house Gas Report­ing Pro­gram (GHGRP).” See foot­notes 15 and 5 in these rules, respectively.
33	105	2009 NASA Sci­en­tists’ research (abstract) (full paper)
34	86	Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change Fifth Assess­ment Report, 2013 (see Table 8.7 on p714 in Chap­ter 8 of the report)
27.2 (bio­genic) — 29.8 (fos­sil)	80.8 (bio­genic) — 82.5 (fos­sil)	Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change Sixth Assess­ment Report, 2021 (see Table 7.15 on p1739 (7–125) in the Full Report.

Con­sid­er­ing that it’s the near-term (20 year) time frame in which we must avoid glob­al warm­ing tip­ping points (like the thaw­ing of the arc­tic tun­dra that would release far more methane), these high­er 20-year fig­ures should be used when eval­u­at­ing the glob­al warm­ing impacts of methane. Despite this updat­ed sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing, EPA still reg­u­lates methane as if it’s only 20-some times worse than CO2. Find this dis­cussed more in these articles:

• More Bad News For Frack­ing: IPCC Warns Methane Traps Much More Heat Than We Thought (Cli­mate Progress, Oct 2013)
• More on methane: EPA reex­am­ines poten­cy of green­house gas (May 2013)

Nat­ur­al gas is unavoid­ably worse than coal for the cli­mate, due to methane leak­age through­out the sys­tem. It used to be thought that if the total leak­age exceeds 3.2%, nat­ur­al gas becomes worse for the cli­mate than coal. It’s now known that nat­ur­al gas is worse than coal if leak­age exceeds just 2.8%. Recent stud­ies have found actu­al leak­age rates of 4% over a Col­orado gas field and 9% leak­age in the Uin­ta Basin of Utah.

Leak­age in gas dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems is also exten­sive. Stud­ies in Boston and Wash­ing­ton, DC have doc­u­ment­ed this:

• Boston, MA: Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­lu­tion (2013) — see relat­ed sto­ries at EDF, Boston Globe and CLF
• Wash­ing­ton, DC: Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy (2014) — see relat­ed sto­ries in NPR, Live Sci­ence, Wash­ing­ton Post, Huff­in­g­ton Post, and USA Today

The lat­est sci­ence shows that EPA has under­es­ti­mat­ed methane emis­sions from frack­ing by a fac­tor of 100 to 1,000 times. See:

• Toward a bet­ter under­stand­ing and quan­tifi­ca­tion of methane emis­sions from shale gas devel­op­ment (Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, April 2014)
• Up To 1,000 Times More Methane Released At Gas Wells Than EPA Esti­mates, Study Finds (Cli­mate Progress, 4/15/2014)
• EPA dras­ti­cal­ly under­es­ti­mates methane released at drilling sites (Los Ange­les Times, 4/14/2014)

Fur­ther stud­ies on the glob­al warm­ing impacts of nat­ur­al gas, and gas leak­age rates, can be found here:

• Research by Prof. Howarth at Cor­nell University
• Physi­cians, Sci­en­tists, and Engi­neers for Healthy Energy
• Source­watch: Nat­ur­al gas leak­age rates
• Cli­mate Progress: 
  • Bridge To Nowhere? NOAA Con­firms High Methane Leak­age Rate Up To 9% From Gas Fields, Gut­ting Cli­mate Benefit
  • Bomb­shell Study: High Methane Emis­sions Mea­sured Over Gas Field “May Off­set Cli­mate Ben­e­fits of Nat­ur­al Gas”
  • Nat­ur­al Gas Bomb­shell: Switch­ing From Coal to Gas Increas­es Warm­ing for Decades, Has Min­i­mal Ben­e­fit Even in 2100
• Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can: Frack­ing Would Emit Large Quan­ti­ties of Green­house Gases
• Gas is not clean energy

Nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants, prices and import / export

Since around 1997, there have been some­where on the order of 1,000 pro­pos­als for new nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants in the U.S. Approx­i­mate­ly 90% of pow­er plant pro­pos­als in the late 1990s were for nat­ur­al gas. Only about 400 of these were built and some aren’t even oper­at­ing, because of then-high gas prices. Many were defeat­ed by local oppo­si­tion or with­drawn for eco­nom­ic rea­sons, since the indus­try went over­board.  Since the frack­ing boom, a new (but far small­er) wave of pro­posed new nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants, and con­ver­sa­tions from coal to gas, is is sweep­ing the coun­try.  Some coal, “bio­mass” and nuclear facil­i­ties are clos­ing because they can­not com­pete with the tem­porar­i­ly low prices of gas.

97% of nat­ur­al gas con­sumed in the U.S. is from the U.S. and Cana­da. How­ev­er, con­ven­tion­al nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion has peaked in North Amer­i­ca.  Until the frack­ing boom, more wells were drilled, but gas pro­duc­tion had lev­eled off. Between 1999 and 2004, nat­ur­al gas prices have tripled as imports from Cana­da slowed and domes­tic pro­duc­tion failed to keep up with demand. To feed the increas­ing demand, liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) import ter­mi­nals were pro­posed, to enable imports so that the U.S. can use its mil­i­tary might to dom­i­nate the world com­pet­ing for the remain­ing nat­ur­al gas, now that oil pro­duc­tion has start­ed peak­ing glob­al­ly. The U.S. had 5 LNG ter­mi­nals and out of approx­i­mate­ly 60 addi­tion­al LNG ter­mi­nals pro­posed, six new ones were built, most­ly on the Gulf Coast.

Since the frack­ing boom, some of these LNG pro­pos­als have turned to try­ing to export gas to coun­tries like Chi­na and Japan where gas prices are far high­er. As of 2013, there are over 30 pro­pos­als for LNG export ter­mi­nals in North America.

Nat­ur­al gas extrac­tion was expect­ed to peak glob­al­ly around 2020, lead­ing to seri­ous glob­al con­flicts as Chi­na and oth­er large and grow­ing economies con­tin­ue down the path of increased depen­dence on fos­sil fuels. How­ev­er, the frack­ing boom opened up new areas which will extend that peak a bit, but not near­ly as much as the indus­try purports.

Natural Gas Extraction / Hydraulic Fracturing (“Fracking”)

• Un-Nat­ur­al Gas
• Shale Shock
• Frack­ing and the Food System

Natural Gas Contaminants and Health Hazards

• Med­ical-Envi­ron­men­tal Report
  (includes info on nat­ur­al gas con­t­a­m­i­nants and their health haz­ards, includ­ing lead, mer­cury, radon and more)
• “Un-Well: Con­cerns are mount­ing over health effects of gas drilling”
• Nat­ur­al Gas Health Hazards
• Nat­ur­al Gas: Avoid­able Health Hazard
• Chem­i­cal Analy­sis of Nat­ur­al Gas
• Coal-bed Methane

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

• LNG Fact­sheet
• Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (FERC) LNG page
  • FERC maps of Exist­ing, Approved, Proposed/Potential Import and Proposed/Potential Export LNG Ter­mi­nals in North America.
• Pub­lic Cit­i­zen LNG Page (includes LNG fact sheets)
• Pub­lic Safe­ty and FER­C’s LNG Spin, What Cit­i­zens Aren’t Being Told (Pipeline Safe­ty Trust report, 5/14/2005)
• 5/5/2005 Pre­sen­ta­tion by FERC Chair­man Pat Wood before Stan­ford Wash­ing­ton Research Group 2005 Insti­tu­tion­al Pol­i­cy Con­fer­ence (p20 shows that only 10 LNG ter­mi­nals are need­ed in North Amer­i­ca to meet short-term demand — two in Atlantic Cana­da, two in Mex­i­co, and two each on the east, west and gulf coasts of the U.S.)
• Stay Informed! Join the LNG Safe­ty Email List (Search­able list archives available)

Terrorism/Accident Risk

• San­dia Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry Report on Ter­ror­ism and Acci­dent Risks from LNG Ship­ping (Dec 2004) 
  • Study spells out high toll on city in LNG (Boston Globe, Dec. 21, 2004)
• “LNG Facil­i­ties in Urban Areas: A Secu­ri­ty Risk Man­age­ment Analy­sis for Rhode Island,” May 2005.This threat analy­sis for the (now with­drawn) Keyspan LNG ter­mi­nal pro­pos­al in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island pro­vides a far more hon­est and detailed assess­ment of the ter­ror­ism threat to LNG tankers. For some of the most seri­ous threats, see the sec­tions on large cal­iber rock­ets, shaped charges and attacks via boat start­ing on pages 89, 96 and 101, respectively.

Oppo­si­tion to LNG:

• reEarth (oppo­si­tion to Bahamas LNG terminal)
• LNG Watch (Cal­i­for­nia anti-LNG net­work) and their excel­lent Resources page
• RiverVi­sion (opposed 5 pro­posed LNG ter­mi­nals in Oregon)
• LNG Dan­ger To Our Com­mu­ni­ties (Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Attor­ney Tim Riley)
• Mobile Bay Watch (Mobile, AL)
• Valle­jo for Com­mu­ni­ty Planned Renew­al — suc­cess­ful effort that stopped LNG in Valle­jo, CA
• Save the Brew­sters (MA)
• Coali­tion for Respon­si­ble Sit­ing of LNG Facil­i­ties (Fall Riv­er, MA) 
  • Pub­lic Safe­ty Issues at the Pro­posed Fall Riv­er LNG Ter­mi­nal (1/12/2004 report con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion use­ful to cri­tiquing all LNG proposals)
• Safer Waters in Mass­a­chu­setts (Nahant, MA)
• Fair­Play for Harp­swell (Harp­swell, ME)
• Save Pas­samaquod­dy Bay — vot­ers reject LNG ter­mi­nal in Maine
• Sier­ra Club of Mis­sis­sip­pi (Pascagoula, MS)
• LNG Com­mu­ni­ty Focus (Logan Town­ship, NJ)
• Broad­wa­ter facil­i­ty (Long Island Sound, NY / CT) 
  • Anti-Broad­wa­ter Coalition
  • Save the Sound
• Philadel­phia LNG Pro­pos­al (PA)
• Rhode Island for Safe Ener­gy (RISE) (fought expan­sion of Prov­i­dence, RI LNG ter­mi­nal and pro­posed ter­mi­nal by Weaver’s Cove in Fall Riv­er, MA)
• Bor­der Pow­er Plant Work­ing Group (US/Mexico bor­der region)
• Green­peace Mex­i­co (Baja Cal­i­for­nia, Mexico)

PCBs in Natural Gas

• PCBs in Nat­ur­al Gas
• PCB lev­els in nat­ur­al gas found as high as 1,250 parts per million
• Texas East­ern dumped PCB con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed liq­uids in 89 sites in 14 States
• “the mas­sive PCB con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the nat­ur­al gas trans­mis­sion sys­tem of Texas East­ern Cor­po­ra­tion, a case which required com­plex, long term clean-up.”
• Duke Ener­gy has PCB con­t­a­m­i­na­tion prob­lems as well (from Duke Ener­gy’s 1997 Annu­al Report)
• EPA’s Rules on PCBs in Nat­ur­al Gas Lines

Understanding Title V of the Clean Air Act

• Title V Resource Site
• Title V Handbook

Pipeline Safety

• Pipeline Safe­ty Trust
• Long­horn debate calls atten­tion to pipelines (Austin Amer­i­can-States­man arti­cles on Pipeline Hazards)
• About Pipelines and Pipeline Safety
• Indus­try Newslet­ter on Pipelines
• Pipeline and Haz­ardous Mate­ri­als Safe­ty Administration