Aggregation and Allocation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Oil and Gas Production: Implications for Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Burdens

Abstract

Methods used for emission aggregation and allocation have significant impacts on life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission estimates for oil and gas products; however, because of limited data availability for upstream and mid-stream oil and gas operations, the influence of the allocation technique has not been extensively explored in previous studies. GHG emissions associated with oil and gas production and processing in the Eagle Ford Shale (with 34 gas processing plants and classified into 12 production regions) are estimated, using data from 2013, at three different scales of spatial aggregation (production region, gas plant and basin levels), to characterize the spatial variabilities in GHG emissions within the Eagle Ford Shale. GHG emissions per energy content of oil and gas products vary from 3.4 to 14 g CO2e/MJ among the regions within the Eagle Ford Shale, and from 3.5 to 23 g CO2e/MJ when assigned at the individual gas processing plant level, with a basin average of 6.8 g CO2e/MJ. GHG emissions ar...