Much has been made about natural gas serving as a bridge fuel until more renewable energy can be fed into the US power grid. While that’s a somewhat controversial concept – with hard-core environmentalists preaching zero fossil fuels and hydrocarbon industry folks pooh-poohing renewables for multiple reasons – this National Journal piece explains the wind-to-gas relationship quite well. [National Journal]

Apparently it matters whether you’re on top or bottom when measuring methane emissions. A new study suggest US methane emissions – a potent greenhouse gas – could be 1.5 to 1.7 times higher than previous government estimates. And methane emissions from fuel extraction and refining activities could be 5 times higher. “The beauty of the approach we’re using is that, because we’re taking measurements in the atmosphere, which carry with them a signature of everything that happened upwind, we get a very strong number on what that total should be. Now that we know the total does not equal the sum of the parts, that means that either some of those parts are not what we thought they were, or there are some parts that are simply missing from the inventories,” coauthor of the study Anna M. Michalak, a faculty member in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science said. [Phys.org]

Argentina and Spain appear close to reaching a deal over the former’s nationalization of YPF, an oil and gas company formerly owned by Spain’s Repsol. The Spanish firm was reportedly seeking $10.5 billion in compensation, but no figures have been announced as part of the deal currently in the works. [Financial Times]
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