On Wednesday, researchers from McGill University said that the US and Canada have been underestimating the methane leaking out of more than 4 million abandoned oil and gas wells in their regions.
Canada has estimated 150% lower methane emissions from its abandoned wells while the US underestimates by about 20%.
Actually, in 2019, both Canada and the US actually included methane emissions from abandoned wells in the greenhouse gas inventories submitted to the United Nations (UN), but the study found that the US undocumented about 500,000 wells while Canada 60,000 wells.
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) came up with estimates for emissions that were far too low.
The study also found that major oil and gas-producing states and provinces like Texas and Alberta do not make emissions measurements available, which adds to the uncertainty of the official data.
Methane has more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide in its first 20 years in the atmosphere.
