The Permian basin may be one of the world’s most productive oil and gas prospects but it is also a major source of methane emissions. Analysis of satellite data for the May 2018 to March 2019 period by an international research team reveals the region responsible for the largest methane flux ever reported from U.S. hydrocarbon Spatial distribution of methane emission rates in the Permian Basin. Source: Yuzhong Zhang et al.production operations.

Methane emission trends in the 160,000 km2 basin in New Mexico and Texas were mapped based on 200,000 data points recorded by the European Space Agency’s Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument and analyzed with an atmospheric inversion modeling framework. Data published in Science Advances indicate a methane emission flux of 2.7 teragram/year for the study period, the largest ever documented from a U.S. oil and gas-producing region.

The methane leakage of 3.7%, which is about 60% higher than the national average and has a global warming potential approaching that of annual carbon dioxide emissions from the entire U.S. residential sector. Researchers from the Environmental Defense Fund, Harvard University, Georgia Institute of Technology and the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research suggest that the high methane leakage rate is likely associated with extensive venting and flaring, resulting from insufficient infrastructure to process and transport natural gas.