One Year's Data From MethaneSat Showed Global CH4 Output From Oil & Gas Operations "Far Exceeds" Company Claims
MethaneSAT, the world’s most advanced methane-detecting satellite and first spacecraft owned by an environmental nonprofit, promised to usher in a new era of climate accountability when the device entered Earth’s orbit in 2024. One year later, researchers with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) lost contact with the $88 million satellite, but not before downloading a trove of data collected over the prior year. Now, an initial assessment of data shows that methane emissions from oil and gas basins worldwide far exceed what is reported in official emissions inventories and fall short of targets set by major companies. The early look at MethaneSAT’s system-wide analysis, published on Feb. 2, includes 45 oil and gas producing regions, which account for half of the world’s onshore oil and gas production. Measurements were collected for just over a year, from May 2024 to June 2025.
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Emissions of methane, the leading driver of climate change after carbon dioxide, were 50 percent higher on average than official estimates, including the U.S. EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory. The Permian Basin of West Texas and southeast New Mexico, the world’s largest oil-producing region, had the highest total methane emissions, releasing an estimated 410 metric tons per hour. The data have not yet been peer reviewed.
The rate of methane released varied widely, from 0.6 percent of all marketed gas production in the Appalachian Basin in the eastern U.S. to more than 20 percent of all gas brought to market in the Widyan Basin in Iraq. Emission rates varied between basins where oil is the primary product and those where more gas is produced. Even basins with the lowest methane-emissions intensity released the pollutant at a rate several times higher than oil and gas industry goals.
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Rob Jackson, a professor of earth science at Stanford University who was not involved in the current assessment, cautioned that the findings haven’t been confirmed through a peer-reviewed study published in an academic journal, but said they align with prior research. This “confirms what we’ve known for more than a decade, which is that we substantially underestimate methane emissions from oil and gas production,” Jackson said. The report found that 40 percent of methane emissions, which can include gas leaks as well as intentional venting, in eight regions across the U.S. came from areas that are responsible for less than 7 percent of gas production.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06022026/methanesat-climate-pollution-global-assessment/