In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Arvind Ravikumar, an associate professor at the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Ravikumar is a leading researcher on the topic of methane emissions from oil and gas systems; he recently coauthored a paper demonstrating how the US Environmental Protection Agency can better account for these emissions, which are notoriously hard to measure. Ravikumar and Raimi discuss federal policies that are designed to reduce methane emissions, along with the voluntary commitments made by some companies recently to do just that.

References and recommendations:

“Closing the methane gap in US oil and natural gas production emissions inventories” by Jeffrey S. Rutherford, Evan D. Sherwin, Arvind P. Ravikumar, Garvin A. Heath, Jacob Englander, Daniel Cooley, David Lyon, Mark Omara, Quinn Langfitt, and Adam R. Brandt; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25017-4

Comprehensive news coverage of Hurricane Ida in the Times-Picayune; https://www.nola.com/

“At least 350 oil and chemical spills reported in Louisiana waters after Hurricane Ida” by Tristan Baurick; https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_133c6d96-0f32-11ec-9642-0fb29acbbdba.html

The India Energy Hour podcast; https://www.101reporters.com/podcast/The_India_Energy_Hour

“What do we hope to find when we look for a snow leopard?” by Kathryne Schulz; https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/12/what-do-we-hope-to-find-when-we-look-for-a-snow-leopard