Remote sensing of methane leakage from natural gas and petroleum systems revisited

Abstract

Abstract. The switch from the use of coal to natural gas or oil for the energy generation potentially reduces the greenhouse gas emissions and thus the impact on global warming and climate change because of the larger energy content per CO2 molecule emitted. However, the climate benefit over coal is offset by methane (CH4) leakage from natural gas and petroleum systems, which reverses the climate impact mitigation if the rate of fugitive emissions exceeds the compensation point at which the global warming resulting from the leakage and the benefit from the reduction of coal combustion coincide. Consequently, an accurate quantification of the CH4 emissions from the oil and gas industry is essential to evaluate the suitability of natural gas and petroleum as bridging fuels on the way to a carbon-neutral future. We show that regional CH4 release from large oil and gas fields can be monitored from space by using dense daily recurrent measurements of the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) onboard the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite to quantify emissions and leakage rates. The average emissions for the time period 2018/2019 from the five most productive basins in the United States, the Permian, Appalachia, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Anadarko are estimated to be 3.16 ± 1.13 Mt yr−1, 2.36 ± 0.88 Mt yr−1, 1.52 ± 0.68 Mt yr−1, 0.89 ± 0.56 Mt yr−1, and 2.81 ± 0.77 Mt yr−1, respectively. This corresponds to CH4 leakage rates relative to the associated production between 1.2 % and 1.6 % for the first four production regions, which are consistent with bottom-up estimates and likely fall below the break-even leakage rate for immediate climate benefit. For the Anadarko Basin, the fugitive emission rate is larger and amounts to 4.0 ± 1.1 %, which likely exceeds the break-even rate for immediate benefit and roughly corresponds to the break-even rate for a 20-year time horizon. The determined values are smaller than previously derived satellite-based leakage rates for the time period 2009–2011, which was an early phase of hydraulic fracturing, indicating that it is possible to improve the climate footprint of the oil and gas industry by adopting new technologies and that the efforts to reduce the methane emissions have been successful. For two of the world's largest natural gas fields Galkynysh and Dauletabad in Turkmenistan, we find collective methane emissions of 3.23 ± 1.17 Mt yr−1, which corresponds to a leakage rate of 4.1 ± 1.5 % suggesting that the Turkmen energy industry has not the technological standards concerning avoidance of emissions than the United States average. Together with the high leakage rate for the Anadarko Basin, this indicates that there is potential to reduce fugitive methane emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems worldwide. In particular, relatively newly developed oil and gas plays appear to have larger leakage rates in contrast to more mature production areas.

Quantification of CH<sub>4</sub> emissions from waste disposal sites near the city of Madrid using ground- and space-based observations of COCCON, TROPOMI and IASI

“…Many studies have demonstrated the capabilities of satellite observations to estimate CH 4 emissions, e.g., from oil and gas sector, including accidental leakages (e.g., Varon et al, 2019;De Gouw et al, 2020;Schneising et al, 2020) and from coal mining (Varon et al, 2020). Launched in October 2017, the TROPOspheric Measuring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite provides complete daily global coverage of CH 4 with an unprecedented resolution.…”

“…Launched in October 2017, the TROPOspheric Measuring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite provides complete daily global coverage of CH 4 with an unprecedented resolution. Compared to previous satellite instruments, TROPOMI is able to capture CH 4 enhancements due to emissions on fine scales and to detect large point sources (Varon et al, 2019;De Gouw et al, 2020;Schneising et al, 2020). Satellite retrievals using thermal infrared nadir spectra as observed by IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) or TES (Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer) are especially sensitive to CH 4 concentrations between the middle troposphere and the stratosphere (e.g., Siddans et al, 2017;García et al, 2018;De Wachter et al, 2017;Kulawik et al, 2021;Schneider et al, 2021a).…”

Comprehensive aerial survey quantifies high methane emissions from the New Mexico Permian Basin

“…These conservative approaches still result in mean loss rate estimates over 8% with a 5 th percentile estimate never falling below 5.2%. (6,7,9). Applying our basin-wide quantification method to data from Cusworth et al in the overlapping region of New Mexico, we find a fractional loss rate of 4.4% for directlymeasured emissions (10).…”

“…With aircraft-and tower-based methane concentration measurements, Lyon et al estimated the NG production loss at 3.3% in a subdomain of the Permian (7). Zhang et al and Schneising et al apply inversion methods based on satellite measurements, finding a NG production loss rate of roughly 3.7% for the full Texas and New Mexico Permian (6,9).…”

Methane detection and quantification in the upstream oil and gas sector: the role of satellites in emissions detection, reconciling and reporting

“…Intra-daily and inter-daily variation can be signicant; differences in emission rates recorded for an abandoned well can vary by a factor of 18 over a day 81 and similarly for whole oil and gas elds. 82 All measurement technologies will fall victim to these types of variation, with some well suited to capturing intra-daily variation (enclosed chamber, perimeter facility, micrometeorological, remote observatories and towers). But without signicant investment of time and money few are capable of accounting for inter-daily variation.…”