Q&A: Satellites and Detecting Methane Emissions

Mark Green
Posted March 5, 2024

MethaneSat, an emissions-detecting satellite developed and funded by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), launched this week and offers an opportunity to add to an understanding of methane emissions and ways to detect and reduce them.

API welcomes verified, third-party data from satellites and other airborne and ground-based technologies to support progress in reducing methane emissions, which the U.S. natural gas and oil industry already has made through industry-led initiatives such as The Environmental Partnership. We underline “verified,” because satellite monitoring is an emerging technology, with advantages and disadvantages, and it should be confirmed by experts on the ground and by the EPA as the environmental regulator working in the public interest.

Key points for understanding and context:

• The leading methane source in the U.S. is agriculture, according to EPA, including livestock digestion and the storage and management of manure. Natural gas and petroleum systems rank second, followed by methane produced at landfills.
• Average U.S. methane emissions intensity – emissions per unit of oil and natural gas production – declined nearly 66% across the seven major energy-producing regions from 2011 to 2021, even as natural gas and oil production increased.
• The U.S. natural gas and oil industry shares the Biden administration’s goal of reducing methane emissions, and smart federal regulation can help build on industry’s progress to date. We remain actively engaged with the EPA on the Methane Rule as we seek that it balances methane emissions reductions with the need to continue meeting rising energy demand.
• The Environmental Partnership is focused on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from natural gas and oil operations through a number of technological and operational programs and is sharing best practices across the entire industry. For example, participants in the Partnership’s flare management program reduced total flare volumes by 14% in 2022 over 2021 and flare intensity by 2.4%.

In the Q&A that follows, Dr. Aaron Padilla, API vice president of Corporate Policy, discusses the broad effort to reduce U.S. methane emissions and the role that satellite data can play.

Q: What are energy producers doing to detect and reduce methane emissions?

Padilla: As an industry, we have worked many years with a variety of technologies to improve our ability to detect GHG emissions, which is key to reducing them. For several years, that has included using commercial satellites, which have provided our members with ever-improving capabilities to detect methane emissions from above the earth like the new EDF satellite is expected to provide.

This satellite capability works alongside other detection technologies, including drones, fixed-wing aircraft and ground sensors at natural gas and oil facilities. As an industry, we’ve embraced the innovations across this full range of fast-evolving technologies to detection methane emissions. We've been at this for a while, and the goal has been to keep improving our line of sight into actual methane emissions so we can identify sources, fix problems and reduce emissions.

Everyone should understand that reducing methane emissions is a priority for our industry to address the risks of climate change. The natural gas and oil industry is working to further reduce emissions and keep methane in the pipe throughout our operations to deliver natural gas to families and businesses. That means identifying operational solutions at production facilities and in transmission systems to capture as much methane as practicable. This is the driving focus of members of The Environmental Partnership, which has assembled eight environmental performance programs to reduce emissions using proven, cost-effective technologies.

Q: How does satellite monitoring work, and how does MethaneSat fit in efforts to monitor methane emissions?

Padilla: Sensors on small satellites detect methane emissions and locate local sources from orbit. Imaging spectrometers on satellites detect unique wavelength signatures of methane.

We see MethaneSat as an addition to the commercial satellites already orbiting that our industry has invested in and/or contracted with to acquire data. Not any single satellite launched by a particular organization will be the definitive silver bullet on data. Methane emissions detection is complicated, and it takes a combination of technologies to get the most accurate information – again, drones, aircraft and ground-based technologies.

In all of this, we defer to EPA as the regulator for GHG emissions reporting. The agency needs to be at the center of a fast-developing world of deploying technologies to detect methane emissions. The EPA sets the regulations for reducing methane emissions and the rules for reporting methane emissions. We look to the EPA to be paramount here as the authority in terms of validating any third-party data, working closely with oil and natural gas industry operators.

We welcome MethaneSat and other technologies because high-fidelity data verified by an authority such as EPA, acting in the public interest, can be actionable for our members as they continue reducing methane emissions. We respect EPA’s authority and rely on the EPA data as the official data. Everyone should.

Q: What are the benefits and limitations of satellite monitoring?

Padilla: Satellites are useful for detecting a snapshot of GHG emissions from local sources and across an entire production basin and across expansive pipeline systems. Satellites can be great at fast methane leak detection, which then enables on-the-ground validation of data, investigation, and leak repair. Obviously, satellites can develop the “big picture” from high in the atmosphere, of facilities, regions, states and countries. Commercial satellites and others such as MethaneSat can also help identify any significant sources of methane such as agriculture, livestock and landfills.

Satellite data is evolving to become more accurate to pinpoint site-specific GHG emissions, especially in densely populated production basins like the Permian. Sensors on aircraft, drones, and installed on-the-ground in and around facilities are also evolving in their capabilities to pinpoint sources of GHG emissions.

A couple of other points: Satellites have not been as accurate depicting methane emissions over large bodies of water, and they don’t perform especially well when there’s cloud cover, or where there's forested areas. Even the weather conditions in different parts of the world need to be factored into the detection. They need to be calibrated to be accurate for a particular geography at a certain point in time.

All detection technologies have strengths and weaknesses, and you have to take them into account. This helps explain our view that you have to put together many pieces or sources of data to get the most accurate picture to detect GHG emissions.

Q: How important is EPA’s role in the effort to reduce methane emissions?

Padilla: EPA determines the rules for GHG emissions reporting that is required from oil and natural gas companies. These rules are a set of methodologies that today are largely based on estimates from calculations, which go down to a very granular level – often to the level of individual pieces of equipment at a facility.

We're all moving into a world now where we're able to use more technologies to detect and measure methane emissions. Eventually we’ll be able to assemble data from estimates and from detection and measurement to report GHGs to EPA that is increasingly accurate. But we’re not there yet, and the EPA will need to continue to proceed carefully to allow reporting of data from satellites, aircraft, drones, and sensors when the EPA deems that these technologies are sufficiently accurate and cost-effective.

Q: Is there an advantage American natural gas has over other sources in terms of GHG emissions?

Padilla: We’re leading the way on two fronts. First, we’re leading the way in production volumes of both oil and natural gas. Second, the U.S. is also leading on reducing methane emissions associated with production of that oil and natural gas. That's due to a combination of industry action and strong regulation, primarily from EPA.

We have reduced methane emissions from oil and natural gas production significantly over, roughly, the past decade and a half. According to EPA and the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average methane emissions intensity declined by nearly 66% across seven of the major U.S. energy-producing regions from 2011 to 2021. So, even before EPA implements new regulations that are expected to be quite strong, we have already reduced methane emissions significantly.

The result is an environment where there's a real opportunity for the world to be able to use oil and natural gas that comes from the United States that is low-methane emissions intensity and ever lower over time – so that consumers and policymakers alike can know that energy from the United States meets our expectations that it be affordable, reliance, and lower carbon.