“No other country in the world has ever created anything like this in the Arctic. By creating a brand new gas production center beyond the ArcticCircle, Russia has proven its leadership in the Arctic” Alexey Miller, chair of Gazprom
about his ticking #CH4 bomb on the #permafrost
This is the permafrost line in Russia.
(source: Permafrost-affected soils and their carbon pools with a focus on the Russian Arctic, Zubrzycki et al 2014)
This is the location of #Norilsk diesel disaster, where a fuel tank sat on thawing permafrost and broke its legs, so to speak.
With marked Yamal Peninsula as main origin for gas, and an attempt of added permafrost line according to the previous pic.
Pic 1 is the Eurasian pipeline network as of 2007, with a rough permafrost line added. The export scheme is largely the same today as shown in Gazproms own Pic 2 from 2017.
Everything here all a likely methane source in leaks and flaring. And if built on permafrost, a 💣 threat.
And who's the ultimate culprit?
Like with Bolsonaro's Amazon destruction,
the EU of course. The EU, and Dr. Merkel with her Germany€First attitude and her neoclassic stance of "#NordStream2 isn't a political issue but a private enterprise." @TimmermansEU
Now some figures:
Pic 1: Of the 200bn m3 export to Europe in 2018, 58bn went to Germany.
Pic 2: All gas suppliers to Europe compared.
Pic 3: 🇩🇪isn't dependent on Gazbomb. oec.world/en/profile/cou… shows, it's actually 🇳🇴gas, at the moment. But 🇳🇴aims to decarbonize. So Gazbomb wants to take over
Pic 1: Gazbomb's gas sales to FSU states
Pic 2: Russian domestic pipeline length in 2016: 28k km as a certain source of leaks. The ones built on permafrost? Consider them a ticking CH4 bomb.
Pic 3: Eurasian gas pipeline scheme with a rough permafrost line
Pic 4: Yamal wells
The permafrost is one risk. #Norilsk
But the awe inspiring infrastructure leaks CH4 in extraction processes and transport, too. Gazbomb's own figures say, the CH4 emissions in total are 0,015% of gas produced🙄
Constantin Zerger from @Umwelthilfe found out:
A for-profit company released numbers on only 2 sites on Yamal peninsula: leaks of 99t and 17t per HOUR
reuters.com/article/us-cli…
That's 88.4 million tonnes per year from these two sites alone - if they continue to leak for a year. Do they? Who knows. We only hear "0.015%" 🤷♀️
According to Global Methane Project, fossil fuel CH4 emissions are ~111 Tg/yr (top down) or ~128 (Tg/y bottom up) essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/15…
(Top Down/Bottom Up are different accounting methods.)
In a year, the two leaks alone Reuters writes about,
would amount to 88.4 Tg CH4⁉️
( I'm maths dyslexic, so please correct all figures I write, even the ones I merely quote 😁)
But if the for-profit company guesstimated right wrt 99 t and 17 t per hour as stated by Reuters, then something is odd wrt the knowledge on CH4 sinks -and ofc with Gazprom's figures.
Methane is 87x worse than CO2 for 20yrs and amplifies short term warming.
Whatever CH4 source or sinks are, IPCC has a budget for it's warming (green circly lines).
We can control🐄, rice and leaks / flaring in fossil fuel product chain. So we gotta reduce all 3 now. Today.🤷♀️
Browsing Gazbomb's webpage is awesome wrt the engineering and ingenuity of last century's Russians.
Focused on true climate protection -as opposed to greenwashing and frankly, climate sabotage- Russian genius could certainly be our saviour.
But today, they aren't.
Like EU &US.
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