News release: “When NOAA scientists began routinely monitoring the atmosphere’s composition at a tower north of Denver a few years ago, their instruments immediately sniffed something strange: plumes of air rich with chemical pollutants including the potent greenhouse gas methane. Some of the pollutants picked up are known to damage air quality. Another, methane, is 25 times more effective per molecule than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. The scientists were concerned. None of NOAA’s other air composition monitoring towers – there are eight, in total, scattered around the continental United States – had recorded anything similar…The research team’s chemical fingerprinting work showed that oil and gas equipment and activities – well pads equipment including condensate storage tanks, pipelines, compressors and more – leaked or vented an estimated 4 percent of all natural gas produced to the atmosphere. That loss is about double the previous best-guess estimate, based on engineering calculations and industry data, of about 2 percent loss.”