Quantifying atmospheric methane emissions from oil and natural gas production in the Bakken shale region of North Dakota
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We present in situ airborne measurements of methane (CH4) and ethane (C2H6) taken aboard a NOAA DHC‐6 Twin Otter research aircraft in May 2014 over the Williston Basin in northwestern North Dakota, a region of rapidly growing oil and natural gas production. The Williston Basin is best known for the Bakken shale formation, from which a significant increase in oil and gas extraction has occurred since 2009. We derive a CH4 emission rate from this region using airborne data by calculating the CH4 enhancement flux through the planetary boundary layer downwind of the region. We calculate CH4 emissions of (36 ± 13), (27 ± 13), (27 ± 12), (27 ± 12), and (25 ± 10) × 103 kg/h from five transects on 3 days in May 2014 downwind of the Bakken shale region of North Dakota. The average emission, (28 ± 5) × 103 kg/h, extrapolates to 0.25 ± 0.05 Tg/yr, which is significantly lower than a previous estimate of CH4 emissions from northwestern North Dakota and southeastern Saskatchewan using satellite remote sensing data. We attribute the majority of CH4 emissions in the region to oil and gas operations in the Bakken based on the similarity between atmospheric C2H6 to CH4 enhancement ratios and the composition of raw natural gas withdrawn from the region.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".