The countries with the largest methane leaks from oil and gas installations

Huge columns of methane, a very powerful “greenhouse gas” leaking from oil and gas sources and installations, have been mapped worldwide – for the first time – with the help of European Sentinel satellites. About 150 methane columns a month were observed from space to cover huge areas, extending up to 300 kilometers, which had – to a large extent – gone unnoticed until now.

In addition to carbon dioxide, methane has now attracted more international attention, and in November 2021 more than 100 countries pledged in Glasgow to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to 2020 levels. The oil and gas sector is estimated to be responsible for at least a quarter of total methane emissions. Sealing extensive leaks is considered necessary in the fight against climate change.

According to the new findings, presented in the scientific journal “Science”, the three countries with the largest methane leaks are Turkmenistan (over one million tons between 2019 and 2020), Russia (almost one million), the USA, Iran, Algeria and Kazakhstan. However, satellites have not been able to capture methane well over areas of other major countries, such as Canada and China, due to frequent dense cloud cover. In contrast, well-known oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, do not appear to be particularly responsible for methane spills.

“We used to know about individual methane leaks, but new research shows the true footprint of methane from global oil and gas activities,” said Riley Darren, a researcher at the Carbon Mapper program that tracks methane emissions worldwide. The researchers, mainly from France and the USA, detected in the two years 2019-20 a total of about 1,800 major sources of methane emissions (at a rate of over 25 tons per hour), of which 1,200 relate to the oil-gas sector.

Methane usually leaks from the facilities of the oil and gas industries, e.g. during pipeline maintenance work, from landfills and waste management, from agriculture and livestock, from mining and coal production, etc. Scientists estimate that 30% to 50% of today’s temperature rise is due to methane, which is more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, as it has 30 times the ability to rise in temperature over 100 years.

As more and more advanced satellites, with more sensitive sensors, are launched into the next five years, methane detection is expected to be even more detailed, intensifying pressures on the oil and gas sector to close its “holes” and at the same time have great resource savings (the value of the leaks is estimated at $ 6 billion for Turkmenistan, $ 4 billion for Russia and $ 1.6 billion for the US).

Link to the scientific publication: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj4351

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