Attributing Natural Gas Production to Natural Gas Users: A Geospatial Approach

Natural gas is often perceived as a commodity fuel with limited variability, largely due to extensive standardization of pipeline-quality natural gas. Once natural gas is processed and entered into the transmission and distribution system, it is nearly pure methane with limited tolerance for impurities. Upstream of the transmission and distribution system, however, natural gas characteristics vary substantially. For example, production basins have highly variable carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other non-methane (CH₄) content. Extraction and processing practices vary as well. One of the most significant environmental characteristics of natural gas is its greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity, which has increasingly been highlighted as shale-based production continues and as attention to the requirements for a fully decarbonized energy system grows. It is well established that methane leakage from natural gas systems is higher than long understood, largely due to variation in leakage during the production stage. Such leakage varies by basin. Similarly, the CO₂ content of raw gas varies by basin. This work uses recent research findings from some of the U.S.’ primary natural gas production basins, in addition to information about the location of natural gas infrastructure, to establish methods to determine first-order estimates of the GHG of natural gas being used around the United States. Although natural gas is a commodity product, the environmental footprint of a given unit of natural gas can vary substantially based on its origin and infrastructural needs. Using existing data, we outline methods to quantify where natural gas from each basin is ultimately being consumed.