the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Surveying Methane Point-Source Super-Emissions across Oil and Gas Basins with MethaneSAT
Abstract. Methane emissions from the oil and gas (O&G) industry play a major role in the global methane budget. The MethaneSAT mission, which operated between March 2024 and June 2025, was designed to provide high-quality data on O&G methane emissions, including both regional fluxes and high-emitting point sources. This is enabled by MethaneSAT's high spectral resolution (0.25 nm), medium spatial sampling (110x400 m2 at nadir), and wide-area coverage (about 200 km at nadir). In this work, we showcase the potential of MethaneSAT to survey high-emitting point sources across O&G basins. We first assess MethaneSAT's performance for the detection, quantification and attribution of methane plumes through the analysis of key observation-related parameters, including wind speed, surface albedo and spatial sampling. We estimate a detection limit of about 500 kg/h for favourable observation conditions, which are mostly facilitated by low winds. We then analyse selected MethaneSAT datasets from the main O&G methane hotspots in the world. We observe particularly strong and persistent sources in the Turkmenistan's South Caspian basin and the U.S. Permian Basin (especially across the Midland sub-basin), and reveal major super-emissions in the Maturin (Venezuela), Zagros Foldbelt and Widyan (Iran) O&G basins, and the Appalachian basin including O&G and coal production. We also highlight other examples of strong methane sources at high latitudes (West Siberia), in offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and from the waste sector.
- Preprint
(48101 KB) - Metadata XML
- BibTeX
- EndNote
Status: open (until 20 Nov 2025)
-
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-4666', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Oct 2025
reply
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-4666/egusphere-2025-4666-RC1-supplement.pdfReplyCitation: https://doi.org/
10.5194/egusphere-2025-4666-RC1
Viewed
| HTML | XML | Total | BibTeX | EndNote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 277 | 91 | 9 | 377 | 5 | 5 |
- HTML: 277
- PDF: 91
- XML: 9
- Total: 377
- BibTeX: 5
- EndNote: 5
Viewed (geographical distribution)
| Country | # | Views | % |
|---|
| Total: | 0 |
| HTML: | 0 |
| PDF: | 0 |
| XML: | 0 |
- 1