Global Tracking and Quantification of Oil and Gas Methane Emissions from Recurrent <i>Sentinel-2</i> Imagery

Abstract

Methane (CH₄) emission estimates from top-down studies over oil and gas basins have revealed systematic underestimation of CH₄ emissions in current national inventories. Sparse but extremely large amounts of CH₄ from oil and gas production activities have been detected across the globe, resulting in a significant increase of the overall oil and gas contribution. However, attribution to specific facilities remains a major challenge unless high-spatial-resolution images provide sufficient granularity within the oil and gas basin. In this paper, we monitor known oil and gas infrastructures across the globe using recurrent <i>Sentinel-2</i> imagery to detect and quantify more than 1200 CH₄ emissions. In combination with emission estimates from airborne and <i>Sentinel-5P</i> measurements, we demonstrate the robustness of the fit to a power law from 0.1 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math>/h to 600 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math>/h. We conclude here that the prevalence of ultraemitters (>25<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math>/h) detected globally by <i>Sentinel-5P</i> directly relates to emission occurrences below its detection threshold in the range >2<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>t</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math>/h, which correspond to large emitters covered by <i>Sentinel-2</i>. We also verified that this relation is also valid at a more local scale for two specific countries, namely, Algeria and Turkmenistan, and the Permian basin in the United States.