Scientists say they have made a startling discovery about
the link between domestic oil and gas development and the world’s levels of
atmospheric ethane — a carbon compound that can both damage air quality and
contribute to climate change. A new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has revealed that the Bakken Shale formation, a region of intensely
increasing recent oil production centered in North Dakota and Montana, accounts
for about 2 percent of the entire world’s ethane output — and, in fact, may be
partly responsible for reversing a decades-long decline in global ethane
emissions.
The findings are important for several reasons. First,
ethane output can play a big role in local air quality — when it is released
into the atmosphere, it interacts with hydrogen and carbon and can cause ozone
to form close to the Earth, where it is considered a pollutant that can
irritate or damage the lungs.
Read The Washington
Post Story - “The U.S. oil and gas boom is having global atmospheric consequences, scientists suggest.”
