Reuters report that the leak rate of methane from the damaged pipes is 22920 kg per hour.
The ruptures on the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline system under the Baltic Sea have led to what is likely the biggest single release of climate-damaging methane ever recorded, the United Nations Environment Programme said on Friday.
A huge plume of highly concentrated methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent but shorter-lived than carbon dioxide, was detected in an analysis this week of satellite imagery by researchers associated with UNEP's International Methane Emissions Observatory, or IMEO, the organization said.
“This is really bad, most likely the largest emission event ever detected," Manfredi Caltagirone, head of the IMEO for UNEP, told Reuters. “This is not helpful in a moment when we absolutely need to reduce emissions.”
22920x24x7 = 3.850560 million kg per week
I got an estimate of how much methane the average cow emits from here; between 70 and 120kg per year. So let’s take a mean value of 95kg.
95/365 = 0.26 kg per day = 1.82 kg per week
So, the Nordstream gas leaks per week are the equivalent of 3850560/1.82 = 2115692 cows farting over the same period.
Thus, the Nordstream ruptures emit methane at the same rate as more than two million cows. The good news is, the gas in the pipelines will probably be expelled in a period of weeks so there shouldn’t be any need for the maniacs to start slaughtering farmers’ dairy and beef herds to offset the contribution from the pipelines.
Interesting to also compare and contrast the rates of methane release supposedly coming from the melting of the Siberian permafrost. According to wikipedia(!) this is 17 million tonnes a year, or 0.3 million tonnes a week?
I read somewhere that as the valves are turned off all that's escaping is the gas in the pipes, and this in total is about the same as Germany typically uses in 2 days. So a lot of gas to waste but over a year and globally it's not a significant release.