Methane

WASHINGTON -- The United States will work with at least seven other countries to harvest methane emissions as fuel and reduce pollution that contributes to global warming, the Bush administration announced yesterday. The plan calls for transferring US technology to other industrialized and developing nations to help them create markets for methane, a heat-trapping gas that largely goes to waste. As much as $53 million will be spent as seed money to gain private US companies' investment of potentially billions of dollars in other countries, officials said.

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it will delay requirements for capturing air emissions from oil and gas wells until 2015, though in the interim the agency will impose other requirements, including gas flaring, that it said would reduce the release of smog-forming and toxic chemicals by 90 percent. The move represents a victory for firms that use hydraulic fracturing to tap natural gas resources trapped in shale rock. The American Petroleum Institute, which has been harshly critical of President Obama's administration's policies, said EPA's...

WASHINGTON -- Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb. Methane -- a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide -- is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Pennsylvania environmental regulators said yesterday that they have given permission to a natural-gas driller to stop delivering replacement water to residents whose drinking water wells were tainted with methane. Residents expressed outrage and threatened to take the matter to court. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has been delivering water to homes in the northeast village of Dimock since January of 2009. The Houston-based energy company asked the Department of Environmental Protection for approval to stop the water deliveries by the end of November, saying Dimock's water is...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A crew drilling a natural gas well through an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle hit a pocket of methane gas that ignited, triggering an explosion that burned seven workers, state and company officials said yesterday. The seven workers were taken to the West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh. Two were released by the end of the day and the others were in fair condition and talking with their families, a hospital spokesman said. The blast created a column of flame that was initially at least 70 feet high, but the rig operator said the...

The boss of a New Zealand coal mine where 29 people died in an explosion last year has acknowledged the mine faced difficulties with finances, personnel and safety. In testimony this week at a formal inquiry into the methane-fueled disaster, Pike River Coal Chief Executive Peter Whittall said he knew a four-inch pipeline removing methane gas from the mine was "inadequate" from the time it was installed. He said the plan was always to replace the pipe with a larger one. Whittall said he'd faced "a lot of frustration" with the lack of continuity in having six...

BOGOTA — An explosion believed caused by a methane gas buildup rocked an underground coal mine during a shift change early yesterday, killing 21 workers. A similar fatal blast happened at the same mine four years ago. Five victims died outside the entrance, said Gabriel Tamayo, manager of the La Preciosa mine in Sardinata, 255 miles northeast of Colombia’s capital, Bogota. He said 16 other miners trapped inside were also believed to have died in the blast, which happened shortly before 7 a.m. Colombian Red Cross rescue chief Carlos Ivan Marquez said preliminary indications...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Pennsylvania environmental regulators said yesterday that they have given permission to a natural-gas driller to stop delivering replacement water to residents whose drinking water wells were tainted with methane. Residents expressed outrage and threatened to take the matter to court. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has been delivering water to homes in the northeast village of Dimock since January of 2009. The Houston-based energy company asked the Department of Environmental Protection for approval to stop the water deliveries by the end of November, saying...

PARIS -- Saturn's planet-size moon Titan has dramatic weather, with turbulent high-altitude winds, periodic floods of liquid methane and possibly lightning, scientists said last week in describing a world that may look like Earth before life developed. The European Space Agency's probe landed on Titan in January, uncovering some mysteries of the methane-rich globe -- the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. Scientists presented detailed results of months of study in the online edition of the journal Nature and at a news conference in Paris.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Massey Energy Co. yesterday rejected nearly every part of the federal government’s theory on what caused the deadly explosion at its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia last spring, killing 29 men. The Richmond, Va.-based coal company doesn’t believe that worn shearer bits, broken water sprayers, or an excessive buildup of coal dust contributed to the blast, said Shane Harvey, vice president and general counsel....

When Nathan Phillips started driving the streets of Boston looking for natural gas leaks, he was stunned to find they numbered in the thousands. The Boston University associate professor of geography and the environment wanted to document the extent of leaks because of concerns that the gas could harm trees and add to greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Then he found a leak that posed a more immediate danger, and it was near his home. Phillips found the leak at a manhole in front of the West Newton Cinema.

The boss of a New Zealand coal mine where 29 people died in an explosion last year has acknowledged the mine faced difficulties with finances, personnel and safety. In testimony this week at a formal inquiry into the methane-fueled disaster, Pike River Coal Chief Executive Peter Whittall said he knew a four-inch pipeline removing methane gas from the mine was "inadequate" from the time it was installed. He said the plan was always to replace the pipe with a larger one. Whittall said he'd faced "a lot of frustration" with the lack of continuity in...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Massey Energy Co. yesterday rejected nearly every part of the federal government’s theory on what caused the deadly explosion at its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia last spring, killing 29 men. The Richmond, Va.-based coal company doesn’t believe that worn shearer bits, broken water sprayers, or an excessive buildup of coal dust contributed to the blast, said Shane Harvey, vice president and general counsel....

BOGOTA — An explosion believed caused by a methane gas buildup rocked an underground coal mine during a shift change early yesterday, killing 21 workers. A similar fatal blast happened at the same mine four years ago. Five victims died outside the entrance, said Gabriel Tamayo, manager of the La Preciosa mine in Sardinata, 255 miles northeast of Colombia’s capital, Bogota. He said 16 other miners trapped inside were also believed to have died in the blast, which happened shortly before 7 a.m. Colombian Red Cross rescue chief Carlos Ivan Marquez said...

GREYMOUTH, New Zealand — Police say all 29 workers missing in a New Zealand coal mine are dead after a second explosion today that no one could have survived. Explosive and poisonous gases had prevented rescuers from entering the mine to search for the missing men since an initial explosion on Friday at the Pike River Mine. But even if any had survived, the second blast would have killed them, police superintendent Gary Knowles said. “Unfortunately I have to inform the public of New Zealand at 2:37 p.m. today there was another massive explosion underground and based on...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A crew drilling a natural gas well through an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle hit a pocket of methane gas that ignited, triggering an explosion that burned seven workers, state and company officials said yesterday. The seven workers were taken to the West Penn Burn Center in Pittsburgh. Two were released by the end of the day and the others were in fair condition and talking with their families, a hospital spokesman said. The blast created a column of flame that was initially at least...

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it will delay requirements for capturing air emissions from oil and gas wells until 2015, though in the interim the agency will impose other requirements, including gas flaring, that it said would reduce the release of smog-forming and toxic chemicals by 90 percent. The move represents a victory for firms that use hydraulic fracturing to tap natural gas resources trapped in shale rock. The American Petroleum Institute, which has been harshly critical of President Obama's administration's policies, said EPA's...

GREYMOUTH, New Zealand — Police say all 29 workers missing in a New Zealand coal mine are dead after a second explosion today that no one could have survived. Explosive and poisonous gases had prevented rescuers from entering the mine to search for the missing men since an initial explosion on Friday at the Pike River Mine. But even if any had survived, the second blast would have killed them, police superintendent Gary Knowles said. “Unfortunately I have to inform the public of New Zealand at 2:37 p.m. today there was another massive explosion...

MOSCOW — Rescue workers scrambled to save 83 people trapped in Russia’s largest underground coal mine after two explosions killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more, officials said. Among those still trapped early today were rescue workers who had entered the Siberian mine after the first blast. A high level of methane gas after yesterday’s second, more powerful blast raised fears of further explosions and prevented more rescuers from going into the mine for the rest of the day. Only early today was the first rescue team sent down to try to bring out five...

To avoid setting too-high hopes for voluntary carbon offsets - the system by which a traveler can give money to a wind farm project in Minnesota, for example, to minimize the environmental impact of a flight to Tuscany - it helps to stay grounded. For that, turn briefly to northern Norway and to Cecilie Hansen, farmer and vice mayor of an Arctic region along the Russian border. Hansen lives rooted in a natural place with cows in the fields and bears in the forest. Yet she has flown through crowded European hubs en route to work and play.