A recent study indicated that methane emissions were increasing, but not from industry sources. Instead, the source of those emissions was biological.
This from 2014:
From: Sources of Methane Emissions Still Uncertain: Study
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/sources-of-methane-emissions-still-uncertain-study-17010But the scientists suggest that the greater contribution to skyrocketing methane levels has more to do with biological sources of the gas. Methane molecules are made of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and the carbon in biological methane tends to be slightly lighter than the carbon in methane associated with fossil fuels. And over the past decade or so, the proportion of lighter methane in the atmosphere compared to heavier methane has been rising. “I think this perspective is basically right,” said Martin Helmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, in Jena, Germany, in an email. Helmann was not involved in the research.
The authors of the Science paper have some ideas about why biological sources of methane may be increasing. “In the southern hemisphere especially,” Nisbet said, “but also in the northern tropics, a series of really wet years has caused wetlands to expand”—and vegetation decomposing in swamps and shallow lakes is a well known source of natural methane emissions. Another is cows, which generate methane as they digest their food, then belch it out into the air.
These explanations, however, aren’t at all definitive — another key point Nisbet and his co-authors make in the Science paper. “The measurements we make in the air are direct,” he said. “Estimates of where methane is coming from, by contrast, is much less reliable. You estimate the contributions from gas leaks, count up the cows, estimate the emissions from wetlands. There’s obviously going to be a lot of error.”
The silly part is that aside from constituting a fire/explosion hazard in any large quantity, methane (the predominant ingredient in Natural Gas) is marketable. The incentive is already there to recover as much as possible. If that was not enough, the vapor pressure limits were set on crude oil transported by rail to one atmosphere. That means gas charged crude oil has to be processed to remove natural gas dissolved in it, and those gasses (Methane, ethane, propane, butanes, and heavier) are either recovered or burned, but not emitted in the quantities which might have been vented from tanker cars in transit a decade ago. Flaring restrictions and gas handling plans are now required for newly drilled and completed wells, further reducing the emissions from the industry, and overall, even though the trend has been for production to increase, the emissions decreased.
But swamps don't have deep pockets...
