A Source-Level Estimation and Uncertainty Analysis of Methane Emission in China’s Oil and Natural Gas Sector

Shuo Sun, Linwei Ma and Zheng Li
Additional contact information
Shuo Sun: State Key Laboratory of Power Systems, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Linwei Ma: State Key Laboratory of Power Systems, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Zheng Li: State Key Laboratory of Power Systems, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Centre, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-18

Abstract: A high-quality methane emission estimation in China’s oil and gas sector is the basis of an effective mitigation strategy. Currently, the published emission data and studies of China’s oil and gas sector only provide estimations of total emissions, which is not enough for good analysis of the trend and impact factors for the instruction of emission mitigation activities. The main problem is that published data for oil and gas infrastructure in China is incomplete, which makes it difficult to apply the conventional greenhouse gas inventory compiling method and the uncertainty estimation strategy. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a method to estimate infrastructure data using all available data, including partial data for the infrastructure, national production and consumption of oil and gas, and production and production capacity data of oil and gas enterprises, and then uses a Monte Carlo-based method to generate a source-based inventory and uncertainty analysis of methane emission for China’s oil and gas industry from 1995 to 2018. We found that methane emission increased from 208.3 kt in 1995 to 1428.8 kt in 2018. Methane emission in 2018 has an uncertainty of about ±3%. Compared to former studies, our research found that the production stage of natural gas is the main contributor, which is further driven by the growth of natural gas production. The mitigation potential introduced by technology development on methane emission remains large.

Keywords: methane emission inventory; oil and natural gas; China; uncertainty; emission sources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/10/3684/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/10/3684/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:10:p:3684-:d:817902

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().