Porter Ranch is an affluent residential area outside Los Angeles with a population of around 30,000. Close by is the Aliso Canyon, a geological feature that the Californian oil and gas industry has converted for the underground storage of natural gas. From a distance the area appears quiet and serene, its landscape a valuable asset. It is very different when one considers what lies beneath.
Newsweek reports that the Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) has converted more than 100 abandoned oil wells in the canyon into a massive underground natural gas storage facility that is estimated to be capable of retaining about 80 billion cubic feet of methane gas. In simple terms, technology has now reached a stage whereby the hydrocarbon industry can opt to inject underground enormous amounts of natural gas, and keep it there for a very long time until the circumstances are deemed right to put the resource on the market at the most profitable prices.
As often happens however, the works of heavy industry such as petroleum do not really go hand in hand with other sectors of the economy. Porter Ranch is a case in point. Over the last two decades many rich families were lured into buying land and building their homes at idyllic sites on the far outskirts of Los Angeles – a megacity often described as built by oil men for oil men – without knowing that their lifetime investment was getting dangerously too close to the quasi-artificial natural gas reservoirs.
A few months ago the unthinkable happened when SoCalGas workers realised that there was a massive methane leak releasing an estimated 60,000 kilogrammes of gas per hour into the air with a plume protruding in such a way that not just the natural environment but also the Porter Ranch neighbourhood was being exposed.
Methane is a colourless, odourless gas that is not really considered a major threat to human health – at least unless explosive mixtures are formed in the air – certainly, at least, not as dangerous as the ‘silent killer’ carbon monoxide. The problem is however that when released from underground deposits it tends to transport with it a number of its chemical relatives such as benzene that indeed can present a serious threat especially under prolonged exposure scenarios.
Moreover, there is the issue of mercaptan, a noxious smelling organic sulphur compound that is added to the gas so that any leaks are easily detected. The massive release of underground methane resulted in considerable mercaptan emissions to ambient air in the environs of Porter Ranch.
Environment activist Erin Brockovich struck a chord when describing the matter as an environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions, perhaps comparable to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. With one very significant difference - that whereas the gulf oil spill was clearly visible to one and all and the entire world could watch in dismay, methane gas is invisible and for a time it was hard to persuade the residents that the pollution was happening and that action had to be taken, and urgently so.
Malta now faces its biggest test in occupational health and safety and risk management
Not for long though. The disaster on the residents’ doorstep was pictured almost apocalyptically thanks to infrared technology that renders the methane plume visible in the form of an ominous black smoker; it did not take long for video clips to run viral on the social media. In the meantime, with the alarm suddenly rising by the hour, SoCalGas revealed that it was forced to engage external expertise to control the leak practically admitting that the event was beyond its means. All this while many families were forced to evacuate their homes to settle elsewhere in safer places away from unbearable odours responsible for worrying symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, all typically related to prolonged over-exposure to high levels of gaseous hydrocarbons and additives in the air.
Facing increased pressure the Governor of California was finally compelled to declare a state of emergency until a proper solution to the problem is achieved, which is however expected to take several more weeks. Rich and affluent as they might be the affected residents who had their lives turned upside down will find little consolation that SoCalGas shall be bearing all the costs of the incident including the lodging expenses.
The company is expecting a multimillion dollar bill while it remains completely uncertain by when the residents shall be allowed to return to their normal lives.
The last thing on the residents’ minds must have been the events unfolding in Paris as the climate agreement was adopted with jubilation. Methane gas is present in much smaller quantities in the global atmosphere than carbon dioxide but the former is a much stronger greenhouse gas that must be tackled to ensure that global temperatures are maintained to within acceptably safe limits.
Neither is the fact that California is one of the US’s most climate active states a consolation. Paris treaty or not, what really matters is that quality of life at Porter Ranch has now been put indefinitely on the line. Whether this will go as far as compromising the market potential of houses in the neighbourhood remains to be seen. The chances are it will.
My keen interest in environmental issues started with the Delimara power station saga in 1988 when as a sixth former taking sciences at the New Lyceum I was somehow impressed at what seemed to me an awkward combination of circumstances: a tumultuous change in government a few months earlier in May 1987, talk about the dire straits Malta had found itself in as a result of continued sole reliance on antiquities at the Marsa power station that was threatening, it used to be said, a major ‘blackout’, and that the solution to all this had to be the construction of a new power station on the virgin peninsula right on the ex-Premier’s doorstep.
Now that I have been passionately teaching about environmental issues for the last 22 years and more it honestly strikes me that Delimara still makes it to news headlines with the overhaul presently underway to convert Malta’s power generation facilities to natural gas firing. It was not just news headlines after all. The way forward with Malta’s energy sector was pivotal during the 2013 election campaign.
Methane now lies at the heart of the matter. It shall be fed into the new power plant from a floating storage LNG tanker berthed in the picturesque bay of Marsaxlokk. Certainly not a pleasant sight but, admittedly, absolutely necessary in the best interests of the nation. At least given the absence of gas pipeline interconnection technology that some will argue should have already been there in the first place.
In my younger days nobody would have thought that 25 years later the personification of Malta’s tallest chimney stack could transmute into a methane-laden tanker in the hope that this will only be a temporary solution while Malta’s energy infrastructure continues to evolve.
Postulating about risks is certainly justified but capitalising on absurdities is surely nonsense if not downright irresponsible. Nevertheless, a methane leak in Marsaxlokk would certainly be unwarranted. Malta now faces its biggest test in occupational health and safety and risk management.
Let us rise to the occasion.
Alan Pulis specialises in environmental management.