Even if we stopped giving out drilling permits and closed all marginal wells tomorrow, emissions would continue to increase. There are lots of oil and gas facilities that have permitted wells that they haven’t drilled yet, and newer facilities that will probably emit more as they age.
Actively reducing emissions in aggregate over the whole country, not just reducing the rate of increase in emissions will either require a lot of time or decisive action from Washington to force states to cancel permits and ban drilling, which is pretty clearly not going to happen without a massive shift in political leanings in the House, Senate, Presidency, and the courts.
It fucking sucks, but without massive political pressure I don’t expect much on the federal level anytime soon.
In the meantime, vote for state candidates this cycle that say they will do the most, and pressure them to do the most they possibly can and don’t ever let up.
A lot of US oil wells are using fracking. Fracking produces oil and gas very quickly, but the well also declines quickly. First year decline for tight oil is 50% and second year another 30%. For shale oil itvis 34% in the first year.
Those two make up over half of the US oil and gas production. So no permits would mean US oil production falls by a third within 2 years or so.
https://jpt.spe.org/life-after-5-how-tight-oil-wells-grow-old
I agree that once directionally-drilled wells are completed and start producing, they have a short life where they are producing a serious profit. The issue is that companies will get permits that don’t expire for drilling a bunch of wells, then they drill some (but not all), and often won’t complete all the wells immediately, as they wait for the market prices of oil and gas to be in their favor. This can drag on for a decade or more.
Once these wells aren’t as profitable, they still produce oil and gas for a long time, and there are emissions associated with that.
Also, while emissions do correlate with production overall, emissions are a much higher proportion of production as wells go beyond their peak, and they often get sold to companies that don’t do as good of a job maintaining them, which leads to more emissions, etc.
