WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2020) The Government Accountability Office (GAO) needs to conduct a study of the degree of methane emissions from oil and gas development across the United States, four US senators wrote in a letter to agency's comptroller-general, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources said on Thursday.
"To better understand how methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry impacts human health and the environment ...we are requesting that GAO conduct a study and issue a comprehensive report on methane emissions," Senators Joe Manchin, Angus King, Tom Carper and Maria Cantwell wrote in the letter.
In their letter to GAO Comptroller-General Gene Dodaro, the three Democratic and one Independent senators expressed concern that because of the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, lower natural gas prices would decrease demand for natural gas, which is mainly methane, leader them to instead expel it into the atmosphere.
"However, we do not have a clear picture of methane emissions in the United States," the senators wrote in their letter.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the impact of methane on climate change is at least 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide when averaged over a century-long year time period, the senators wrote.
