You don’t even have to burn it.

The Western Environmental Law Center has been busy filing legal challenges to BLM oil and gas leases around the West. Nothing new about that. What is new is that these challenges are based on potential impacts to global warming.

The Western Environmental Law Center has been busy filing legal challenges to BLM oil and gas leases around the West. Nothing new about that. What is new is that these challenges are based on potential impacts to global warming.

When I first read this, I thought they were talking about what will happen when these leases are developed, the oil and gas pumped, and all that carbon released into the air when it’s burned as fuel. A novel legal argument, I thought. We need to work every angle we can. But I’m surprised to learn that you don’t even have to burn it to affect climate change. According to an April 23, 2008 press release:

While the natural gas industry promotes its product as a “cleaner-burning fuel,” the global warming impact of natural gas, also known as methane, is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In Colorado, preliminary inventories show that accidental leaks and deliberate releases inject more than 5.6 million tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the air every year.

Last October New Mexico became the second state to adopt new greenhouse gas reporting standards for several industries, including oil and natural gas operations. As it turns out, the oil and gas industry is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the state, usually the result of leaky valves and equipment at the drill site.

No question that the oil and gas industry has been feebly regulated and running roughshod over the West for the last eight years, and more. Its impacts to land, water, wildlife and traditional livelihoods have been devastating. Here’s one more mark against it.

As one who is not invested in any part of the fossil fuel industry (other than the $4 a gallon I pay at the pump), I don’t think it needs to be making any more money. But part of WELC’s argument is that technologies to address leakage will not only reduce emissions by 90% or more, but will help the industry make millions.

These challenges have been filed on behalf of numerous citizens and environmental groups in Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, and most recently Colorado. In Colorado, BLM had proposed opening up 174,000 acres to drilling, most of that in the Rio Grande National Forest in the southwestern part of the state. After this and 90 other formal protests, presumably on a variety of grounds, BLM withdrew 144,000 acres.