Methane Monitoring FAQ’s

Context Corner Edition 7 explains common questions about methane.

August 5, 2024

By Carrie Crumpton, CNX Vice President of Environmental Strategy

I hope you have had a chance to look at our new Methane Monitoring page on our Radical Transparency program website. We’re leading the industry when it comes to methane transparency, and this includes a new interactive methane emissions graph and lots of in-depth and timely information about our methane leak monitoring, detection, and repair program. With lots of new information comes lots of questions, so I wanted to help answer some for you!

Hey Carrie, isn’t methane natural gas?

Methane is a gaseous chemical compound that has 1 carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms (CH₄). Methane can be emitted by many sources including wetlands, landfills, agricultural processes, oil and gas industries, volcanoes, and even cockroaches.

Natural gas is a naturally occurring mixture that is primarily made of methane, but can contain very small amounts of other compounds. Think of it as a recipe where methane is the main ingredient in natural gas.

Why is methane in the news all the time as a greenhouse gas?

Greenhouse gases are gases that can trap heat in the atmosphere and lead to environmental impacts. The main greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases.

Greenhouse gases and climate change are large topics of discussion that have resulted in many newsworthy global climate initiatives. Taking action to protect the environment is a global, multi-sector effort, and the oil and gas industry is doing their part by reducing methane emissions.

Essentially, we all want to maximize the amount of methane staying in the pipelines and out of the air around us.

What is methane intensity?

At times, our operations result in the release of methane into the atmosphere. Some of the releases are intentional and stem from safety or maintenance situations. There are other times where we experience unintentional releases from leaking components of the equipment that are used to produce and transport the gas we sell. Methane intensity is a measurement of the amount of methane that is released into the atmosphere stated as a percentage of the natural gas we sell. Since methane can have environmental impacts and is the main product of our business, we want to have low methane intensities, meaning that the amount of methane released into the atmosphere is very low compared to the amount of natural gas sold.

Because methane intensity is measured as a percentage, it can be compared across companies and against targets. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative has a methane intensity target of being well below 0.20% by 2025 for upstream natural gas producers. Producers can compare their methane intensity to this target to see how well they are limiting the release of methane.

In 2023, CNX’s upstream operations methane intensity was over 80% below the 0.20% target, which means that our methane monitoring and reduction programs are working.

What are the new methane charts telling me?

Our methane charts are industry leading in transparency, detail and timeliness of information. The website has lots of information about our emissions reduction program and our diligent work to reduce methane emissions through innovative facility design, improvements in operational practices and procedures, advancements in detecting and measuring emissions and improved accuracy in emissions reporting. One way that we reduce our methane emissions is through our comprehensive leak detection and repair (LDAR) program. If there is an unintended leak, we want to quickly identify and repair it to limit the release of methane.

The interactive graph we added to our methane monitoring page shows you details about our LDAR program including how many repairs we had to make, how long the leaks lasted, how often we are monitoring, and even the location and component that was leaking. These charts are updated monthly so that there is transparent and timely data provided to all of our stakeholders.

At CNX, we are a low methane intensity natural gas producer in the lowest methane intensity basin in the United States, but we won’t stop there – we are continuously working to reduce methane emissions and responsibly develop the domestic energy that is essential to fuel economic growth and improve the quality of life in our communities and beyond.