Robert Kleinberg: Methane emissions from the fossil fuel industries of the Russian Federation

As one of the world’s most important producers of fossil fuels, the Russian Federation should play an important role in methane mitigation efforts.  However, the Federation’s own estimates of methane emission intensity vary greatly from year to year, and are at variance with estimates of international data collection and research institutes.  As a result of a recent series of large reductions in methane emission estimates, the self-reported methane emission intensity of the Russian Federation oil and gas industry is now less than comparable self reports of the United States. Satellite-based national-level estimates of Russian methane emissions are available, but the error bars are very large, and attributions to specific economic sectors are unreliable.  Satellites are more reliable in characterizing plume events, but the measurements are insensitive and only account for a small fraction of total emissions.  Coal mine methane emissions are easier to characterize but harder to remediate than emissions from oil and gas sources.  In order for Russia to play a constructive role in climate change mitigation, better information about the state of emissions is required.  Monitoring systems should be introduced, and common sense mitigation measures should be widely implemented. 

Bio

Robert L. Kleinberg is Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, and Senior Fellow at the Boston University Institute for Sustainable Energy. His current interests include environmental and regulatory issues associated with the oil and gas industry. From 1980 to 2018 Dr. Kleinberg was employed by Schlumberger, the premier oilfield service company, attaining the rank of Schlumberger Fellow, one of about a dozen to have held this rank in a workforce of 100,000. From 1978 to 1980 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory. Dr. Kleinberg was educated at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S. Chemistry, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D. Physics, 1978). Dr. Kleinberg has authored more than 120 academic and professional papers, holds 41 U.S. patents, and has invented several geophysical instruments that have been commercialized on a worldwide basis. Dr. Kleinberg is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and serves on the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.