Some have suggested that the remaining gas should be pumped out, but a German economy and climate ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said this wasn't possible. “But from our current understanding, I would think that the local effects on marine life in the area is rather small.” 6. But long-term effects on the local environment are not anticipated. Marine animals near the escaping gas may be caught up and killed - especially poor swimmers such as jellyfish, said Rehder. This is because the methane in the water can affect buoyancy and rupture a vessel’s hull. Shipping has been restricted from a 5 nautical mile radius around the leaks. Methane is not a toxic gas, but high concentrations can reduce the amount of available oxygen. Air that contains more than 5 percent methane can be flammable, said Gregor Rehder, a marine biogeochemist and chemical oceanographer at the Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research, so the risk of an explosion is real. While the gas is still leaking, the immediate vicinity is an extremely dangerous place. A leak was reported near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline off the coast of Denmark's Bornholm island | Danish Defence Command 5. Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said it was roughly comparable to the amount of methane leaked from across Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure on any given working week. “This is a wee bubble in the ocean compared to the huge amounts of so-called fugitive methane that are emitted every day around the world due to things like fracking, coal mining and oil extraction,” said Dave Reay, executive director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute. It even pales in comparison to the accumulation of thousands of industrial and agricultural sources of methane that are warming the planet. But "it is not the climate disaster one might think."Īnnual global carbon emissions are around 32 billion tons, so this represents a tiny fraction of the pollution driving climate change.
"The amount of gas lost from the pipeline obviously is large," Kargel said. Will this have a meaningful effect on global temperatures? It is a real travesty, an environmental crime if it was deliberate." 4. Jeffrey Kargel, a senior scientist at the Planetary Research Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said the leak was "really disturbing. With the upper estimates of what might be released in the Baltic more than twice that, this week's disaster may be "unprecedented," said David McCabe, a senior scientist with the Clean Air Task Force. was the 2015 Aliso Canyon leak of roughly 90,000 tons of methane over months. The largest leak ever recorded in the U.S. Methane is also consumed by ocean bacteria as it heads through the water column. The agency also noted there are no "sealing mechanisms" along the pipelines, "so in all likelihood the entire contents of the pipes will escape."īecause at least one of the leaks is in Danish waters, Denmark will have to add these emissions to its climate balance sheet, the agency said.īut it is not clear whether all of the gas in the lines would actually be released into the atmosphere.
Germany's Federal Environment Agency estimated the leaks will lead to emissions of around 7.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent - about 1 percent of Germany's annual emissions.
Kristoffer Böttzauw, the director of the Danish Energy Agency, told reporters on Wednesday that the leaks would equate to about 14 million tons of CO2, about 32 percent of Denmark's annual emissions. It was not in operation but was filled with 177 million cubic meters of gas last year.Įstimates of the total gas in the pipelines that are leaking range from 150 million cubic meters to 500 million cubic meters. Only one of the Nord Stream 2 lines was struck. “It can be assumed that it’s a large amount” of gas in those lines, the German official said. The two Nord Stream 1 pipelines were in operation, although Moscow stopped delivering gas a month ago, and both were hit. “I cannot tell you clearly as the pipelines are owned by Nord Stream AG and the gas comes from Gazprom,” said a spokesperson for the German climate and economy ministry. No government agency in Europe could say for sure how much gas was in the pipes.
0 kommentar(er)
