Analysis of Satellite Remote Sensing Data of NO2 over U.S. Oil and Gas Production Areas
Abstract
The development of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has led to a steep increase in the U.S. production of natural gas and crude oil from shale formations since the mid 2000s. Associated with this industrial activity are emissions of ozone precursors such as nitrogen oxides and VOCs as well as methane, some of which can be monitored from space. Here we present analysis of NO2 tropospheric columns from the OMI and TROPOMI satellite instruments. We use oil and natural gas industrial activity data, as well as flared gas volumes, for a source attribution of NO2 by multivariate linear regression from 2007 to April 2019. For the Permian (TX, NM) and the Bakken (ND) basin, two of the largest production areas in the U.S., we get significant results, with a correlation parameter of r2= 0.8 and r2= 0.35 for the Permian and Bakken basin, respectively, using annually averaged NO2 columns. The fit also yields source estimates that can be attributed to the drilling of new wells, to oil and gas extraction and to gas flaring. Our top-down source attributions compare well with the bottom-up NOx emissions estimates from the Fuel based Oil and Gas emissions inventory (FOG). For 2015 we get agreement within 14 percentage points for the Permian and within 3 percentage points for the Bakken, both within error margins. We will present the final results of our study and show first results on spatial correlations between satellite NO2 and oil and natural gas industrial activity.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.A41D..06D
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3315 Data assimilation;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3360 Remote sensing;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES