Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles' Enormous Methane Leak
On the topic of what went wrong I think this LA weekly[3] article is a much better source. The main problem why the well can't be shut down is that the security valve was removed about 40 years ago: "He pointed out that the valve was old at that time and leaking. It also was not easy to find a new part, so the company opted not to replace it.". Certainly a bad decision and it should be checked if regulations need to be changed to avoid similar problems in the future.<p>EDIT: The old version had used the wrong conversion factors, now corrected<p>The central number is the exhaust mass of 110,000 pounds per hour. So how much is this really? This is about 50 metric tons of methane per hour. To be able to compare it with other greenhouse emissions we can calculate the CO2 equivalent by multiplying with 0.01133[1] giving the rate of: 1247 metric tons CO2e per hour.<p>Using the EPA Online tool[2] we can relate this to the toal emissions in Calfornia or the US. The total emission of methan measured in CO2e for California in 2014 was: 9,546,270 metric tons CO2e. Converted to a rate per hour this gives: 1089 metric tons CO2e per hour.<p>So while the well is leaking it is releasing 114% of the normal methane emissions of California.<p>Compared to all greenhouse gas emissions the well is causing an increase of 10%  in california and 0.3%at the US national level compared to the emissions from large facilities.<p>[1] <a href="http://www3.epa.gov/gasstar/tools/calculations.html" rel="nofollow">http://www3.epa.gov/gasstar/tools/calculations.html</a><p>[2] <a href="http://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/main.do" rel="nofollow">http://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/main.do</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/news/what-went-wrong-at-porter-ranch-6405804" rel="nofollow">http://www.laweekly.com/news/what-went-wrong-at-porter-ranch...</a>