Does anyone know the rate at which these leaks are spewing methane into the atmosphere, and how quickly this pipeline can be shut off (if it isn't already)?
I’ve heard somewhere between 300-400 kilograms gas per second. The pipeline has already been shut off for weeks, but it’ll take days for all the gas that’s already in the line at elevated pressures to leak out. It’s an enormous amount of gas.
That's an insane amount of a very potent greenhouse gas. Seems like it'd be better to strike a match and flare it off as CO2 instead of methane, which has 80 times the greenhouse warming effect of CO2.