U.S. promulgated shale gas exploitation ring

According to a new law issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on April 18, the United States will control the air pollution caused by the use of hydraulic fracturing technology in shale gas extraction. This is the United States' control of shale gas exploitation and environmental pollution. The first statute of pollution.

The regulation requires that by January 2015, all gas wells that use hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction must install relevant equipment to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds and other harmful air pollutants, such as benzene and n-hexane. . Gina McCarthy, deputy director of the EPA's Air and Radiation Office, said in a statement that the shale gas can also contain methane that has a strong greenhouse effect while containing related equipment. At present, methane in the atmospheric environment is mainly caused by the leakage of oil and gas production.

The regulation will affect about 13,000 natural gas wells in the United States. The supply of large quantities of natural gas will undoubtedly have a positive and far-reaching impact on the U.S. economy and related industries. In particular, the U.S. chemical industry has benefited a lot from this. However, the use of thousands of thousands of new fracking gas wells has greatly increased the emissions of air pollutants and methane. The greenhouse gas effect of methane is at least 20 times that of carbon dioxide.

The EPA put forward preliminary proposals for the control of hydraulic fracturing gas wells as early as July of last year. At that time, the American Petroleum Institute and other industry associations considered that the implementation time of this plan was too tight. Therefore, when the US Environmental Protection Agency finally promulgated this regulation, it delayed the actual implementation time by more than two years. In the meantime, these gas wells can reduce the emission of methane and other pollutants by burning during the production.

This revised law was praised by the American Natural Gas Association and the American Petroleum Institute. They said that changes in time and other aspects "can enable related companies to produce the country's much-needed oil and natural gas while reducing pollutant emissions." This law also has the support of the United States environmental protection organization. Jeremy Nichols, director of the Climate Change and Energy Programme of the Wild Earth Guardian, said: “Although over the next two years, these gas wells will continue to burn methane instead of capture, but on the other hand, these will be Substances removed by burning and other methods also reduce emissions to the air.” He stressed that it is time for the industry to take action and step up the installation of new equipment to capture these substances.

It is understood that about half of the new gas wells in the United States have already installed relevant equipment to eradicate the emission of volatile organic compounds and capture air pollutants and methane during shale gas extraction.