"Who Are the Big Ten in the Carbon Pollution Business?"

"What ties America's second-biggest energy company, ConocoPhillips Co., to a small Houston-based shale driller, Halcón Resources Corp.? They had some of the worst carbon pollution rates among their peers in 2012.

Oil and gas operations have come under scrutiny for their climate impacts primarily because they leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The fossil fuel sector is the second-biggest emitter of the gas, which is 86 times as bad as carbon dioxide for the climate on a 20-year time scale. Where carbon dioxide works over centuries to wreak climate havoc, methane is its speedier cousin, working much more rapidly before decaying into less virulent gases. For climate change, both gases matter.

Halcón, whose name means "hawk" in Spanish, is a company founded by Floyd Wilson, a wildcatter who sold his Petrohawk Energy Corp. (the first company to drill in the Eagle Ford Shale in 2008) to BHP Billiton Ltd. for an astounding $15.1 billion in 2011. Halcón, which owned $5 billion in assets in 2012, emitted 6.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents of methane per million cubic feet (mtCO2e/MMcf) of energy produced at the wells it operated. It was the dirtiest producer among the nation's top 40 energy companies in 2012."

Gayathri Vaidyanathan reports for ClimateWire October 6, 2014.
 
SEE ALSO:

"U.S. Emissions Increased In 2013, According To EPA" (Huffington Post)

"EPA Releases Greenhouse Gas Emissions Data from Large Facilities" (EPA Release)