FEAST-Pipeline: A Techno-Economic Model to Assess Effectiveness of Methane Mitigation Policies across Natural Gas Pipelines

Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are a tangible target for near-term mitigation of climate warming. Recently, the U.S. congress passed the Pipes Act of 2020, mandating the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to require new standards for leak detection and repair for U.S. natural gas pipelines to enhance safety and reduce methane emissions. In this work, we develop the FEAST-Pipeline model, a techno-economic model to assess the impact of PHMSA’s proposed regulations on pipeline emissions at distribution, gathering and boosting, and transmission pipelines. Comparisons are made between LDAR programs employing PHMSA’s proposed rules and current methods to identify and repair leaks. We evaluate the factors that influence the effectiveness of pipeline LDAR programs including pipeline material, installation age, corrosion rate, detection sensitivity, survey frequency, and repair time frame. Results of our simulation experiments indicate that PHMSA’s proposed rules can greatly reduce pipeline emissions across all sectors, timely repair of leaks ensures the efficacy of LDAR programs, and LDAR programs that prioritize leak-prone pipelines can increase the efficiency of emissions mitigation.