"Last October, an Idaho farmer using a backhoe punched a hole into a 22-inch (56-cm) pipeline buried under a field, sending more than 51 million cubic feet of natural gas hissing into the air.

While the incident on Williams Companies' Northwest Pipeline was big, it was no anomaly along the roughly 3 million miles (4.8 million km) of natural gas pipelines crisscrossing the U.S.

Accidental pipeline leaks – caused by things like punctures, corrosion, severe weather and faulty equipment - happen routinely and are a climate menace that is not currently counted in the official U.S. tally of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Reuters examination of public data and regulatory documents."

Nichola Groom reports for Reuters March 8, 2024. [2]