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Journalism of Courage
Recently, scientists revealed that a drilling incident, which took place last year at an exploration well in the Mangistau region of southwestern Kazakhstan, led to one of the worst methane leaks in history. It was possibly the second biggest man-made methane leak ever.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas — it traps heat in the atmosphere and adds to global warming. Leaks from fossil fuel operations are the biggest source of methane emissions. About 40% of human-caused methane emissions come from such operations.
Here is a look at what happened in Kazakhstan and what the incident’s environmental impact is likely to be.
What happened?
The drilling incident at the exploration well caused a fire that raged between June and December 2023 and released 127,000 tonnes of methane into the atmosphere. Plumes of gas could be seen from space, which is how scientists behind five satellite instruments detected the leak 115 times during the six months. The leak has now been stopped and the well is currently being sealed with cement.
Manfredi Caltagirone, head of the UN’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, said that the magnitude and the duration of the leak were “unusual” and “extremely big”, according to the BBC, which first reported the incident.
French geoanalytics firm Kayrros investigated the leak and released its findings last month. The firm had the results reviewed by the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Leiden, and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain.
The BBC said the owners of the well, Kazakhstan-based Buzachi Neft, would be fined more than 350 million tenge ($774,000).
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator, “the environmental impact of such a leak is comparable to that of driving more than 717,000 petrol cars for a year,” the BBC reported.
Methane is one of the biggest drivers of climate change, second only to carbon dioxide. Its concentration in the atmosphere has more than doubled in the last couple of centuries and is responsible for around 30 per cent of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.
The Kazakhstan methane leak is the latest addition to the long list of such leaks from the oil and gas sector. The UN Environment Programme said that “massive methane leaks, known as super-emitter events, have been taking place at oil and gas fields all over the world, from the US to Turkmenistan”. Most of these leaks are due to equipment failure.
Notably, 2023 witnessed the highest levels of greenhouse gas concentrations ever in the atmosphere. Methane concentrations increased by 11 parts per billion (ppb).
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are needed to limit near-term warming and improve air quality. The average global temperature has already risen at least 1.2 degree Celsius above pre-industrial times.
To ensure that the planet doesn’t breach the 1.5 degree and 2 degree Celsius thresholds set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries urgently need to implement certain steps, including curbing greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide.
