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  • Brief Communication
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Greenhouse gases

Low methane leakage from gas pipelines

A switch from coal or oil to natural gas could mitigate climate effects in the short term.

Abstract

Using natural gas for fuel releases less carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced than burning oil or coal, but its production and transport are accompanied by emissions of methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide in the short term. This calls into question whether climate forcing could be reduced by switching from coal and oil to natural gas1. We have made measurements in Russia along the world's largest gas-transport system and find that methane leakage is in the region of 1.4%, which is considerably less than expected and comparable to that from systems in the United States. Our calculations indicate that using natural gas in preference to other fossil fuels could be useful in the short term for mitigating climate change.

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Figure 1: Russian pipelines used to transport natural gas.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

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Correspondence to J. Lelieveld.

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Competing interests

The Wuppertal Institute receives two-thirds of its revenue from third-party project funding. Donors comprise the European Union, several national and state governments, non-governmental organizations, charities and private customers. The company E.ON Ruhrgas, based in Essen, Germany, and a shareholder of OAO Gazprom, commissioned several research projects from the institute, including the project that produced the results presented.

Contacts with Ruhrgas and Gazprom were necessary for access to data and do not constitute a conflict of financial interest.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods

Estimating leaks from the Russian natural gas transport system (DOC 32 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Characteristics of the Gazprom gas network and the export corridors (DOC 36 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

Five compressor stations and the associated pipeline sections investigated (DOC 35 kb)

Supplementary Table 3

Measured methane leaks, extrapolated to m3 per year by component (DOC 37 kb)

Supplementary Table 4

Methane emissions from Gazprom long-distance pipelines per year (DOC 45 kb)

Supplementary Figure 1

Photo documentation of the facilities investigated at Kursk, Nyukzeniza and Davidovskaya (DOC 3173 kb)

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Lelieveld, J., Lechtenböhmer, S., Assonov, S. et al. Low methane leakage from gas pipelines. Nature 434, 841–842 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/434841a

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