Methane emissions intensity mapping from space reveals outsized emissions impact from marginal oil and gas production in the U.S.

James P. Williams, Steven Hamburg, Ritesh Gautam, Luis Guanter, Steven Wofsy, Joshua Benmergui, Marvin Knapp, Mark Omara , Ben Lyke, Kaiya Weatherby, Anthony Himmelberger, Katlyn MacKay, Jack Duane Warren

Methane emissions reduction from the oil/gas sector, the largest industrial methane source, is a widely-recognized effective strategy for slowing the rate of climate warming. There are over 600,000 well-pads in the U.S.; one-fifth produce most of the economic value, while the remainder produce limited oil/gas. We use high-resolution MethaneSAT satellite data covering >80% of US onshore production to determine methane emissions across individual well-pad production cohorts, bridging a knowledge gap between what point-source and global-mapping satellites provide. The analysis reveals outsized methane emissions from low-producing well-pads (<15 boe/day), that account for only 6% of national production but more than half of well-pad methane emissions and ~40% of total oil/gas supply-chain emissions. The mean emissions intensity from low-producing well-pads is over tenfold compared to higher-producing well-pads, revealed by the spatially explicit satellite-based methane emissions intensity mapping. These low-producing well-pads represent a major methane mitigation opportunity for the U.S. oil/gas sector.