[gruez]

>In Massachusetts, Lost and Unaccounted for Gas (LAUG) is estimated per mile of pipe, rather than evaluated by regulators or even industry. It is a simple multiplication problem with little bearing on reality

Isn't both ends of a pipe metered? Even if not every pope is metered, at the very least there should be metering at the point of bulk purchase (eg. from a LNG ship) to the end user (gas meter at a home). How hard is it to compare how much is put into the pipe vs how much comes out?

[closewith]

Measurement error in gas networks can be 15% of volume, so not precise enough for this work.

[idiotsecant]

When accurate metering is called for we have the tech to do it just fine to far less than <1% error. This is a classic case where regulation is required. Rational capitalist enterprise is not going to fix this on their own. They don't currently have the right incentives.

[closewith]

To 1% volume, like rotary meters, but not 1% mass. At least not at reasonable cost.

But you are right that regulation is the answer, although personally I think direct leak detection is more realistic than measuring gas flows accurately in a system that's already built around low accuracy metering.

[idiotsecant]

Coriolis flow meters in natural gas have been accurate and pretty inexpensive since the 1990s with accuracies better than 99% on the extreme low end and 99.5% on the high end.

Its easy to say that anything is 'too expensive' when the regulatory bar is set so low that it doesn't exist.

[closewith]

Right, you could put a combustible-gas-safe mass flow sensor on every gas line, high and low pressure, at a cost of roughly 100x current rotary and aperture flow meters, but then metering would become by far the largest cost in gas production.

[iamthemonster]

Nope, Ex rated coriolis flowmeters are barely $150k.

[whall6]

Source?

[szundi]

omg this is real?

[sdenton4]

For far too long we have put up with unmetered popes. Lemme give you 95 reasons why all popes should be metered...

[nativeit]

I know HN comments are among the last bastion of cogent online discourse, but I needed this today.