More ammunition for those who oppose the recent explosion of shale gas exploration and production (e.g. local environmentalists, coal companies):
Cornell University professors will soon publish research that concludes natural gas produced with a drilling method called “hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more.
The study concludes that shale gas developed through fracking carries a higher greenhouse gas footprint because the “fugitive” methane emissions at the fracking sites are greater than releases from conventional gas wells.
I'm not really in a position to evaluate the credibility of the study, although one might read into the fact that industry groups are pushing back on the study's assumptions about the GHG potency of methane (the range is fairly well-established), whereas I would have thought that the quality of measurement of "fugitive methane emissions" would have been much more suspect.
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