Oil and gas impacts on air quality in federal lands in the Bakken region: an overview of the Bakken Air Quality Study and first results

摘要

The Bakken formation contains billions of barrels of oil and gas trapped inrock and shale. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing methods haveallowed for extraction of these resources, leading to exponential growth ofoil production in the region over the past decade. Along with thisdevelopment has come an increase in associated emissions to the atmosphere.Concern about potential impacts of these emissions on federal lands in theregion prompted the National Park Service to sponsor the Bakken Air QualityStudy over two winters in 2013–2014. Here we provide an overview of thestudy and present some initial results aimed at better understanding theimpact of local oil and gas emissions on regional air quality. Data from thestudy, along with long-term monitoring data, suggest that while power plantsare still an important emissions source in the region, emissions from oil andgas activities are impacting ambient concentrations of nitrogen oxides andblack carbon and may dominate recent observed trends in pollutantconcentrations at some of the study sites. Measurements of volatile organiccompounds also definitively show that oil and gas emissions were present inalmost every air mass sampled over a period of more than 4 months.