Seasonality and declining intensity of methane emissions from the Permian and nearby US oil and gas basins

Daniel J. Varon , Daniel J. Jacob, Lucas A. Estrada, Nicholas Balasus, James East, Drew C Pendergrass, Zichong Chen, Melissa P Sulprizio, Mark Omara , Ritesh Gautam, Zachary R. Barkley, Felipe J. Cardoso-Saldaña, Emily K. Reidy, Harshil Kamdar, Evan David Sherwin , Sebastien Biraud, Dylan Jervis, Sudhanshu Pandey , John Worden, Kevin W. Bowman, Joannes D. Maasakkers, Robert L Kleinberg 

We quantify weekly methane emissions and trends from oil and gas production in the US Permian Basin for 2019–2023, and in nearby basins for 2022–2023, by analytical inversion of Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) satellite observations with the Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI) at 25-km resolution. Permian oil and gas emissions averaged 4.0 ± 1.1 Tg a-1 over 2019–2023, with large seasonal variation but little interannual variability. Methane intensity fell from 5.2% to 3.2% as production surged. Intensity in the New Mexico Permian fell from 5.7% to 2.6%, approaching the state’s 2026 target of <2%. Emissions were on average 60% higher in the winter than summer, which we corroborate with Permian Basin Tower Network measurements, Insight M aircraft data, and GHGSat satellite observations. This seasonality may be driven in part by higher winter emissions from liquid storage tanks due to decreased separator efficiency in cold conditions. Similar but weaker seasonality along with decreasing emissions and intensities is found in weekly inversions for the Anadarko, Barnett, Eagle Ford, and Haynesville basins in 2022–2023. Our work suggests that better weatherization of oil and gas facilities could significantly reduce methane emissions.