Environmental Defense Fund Permian Basin Campaign: a science and advocacy-based approach to quantify and mitigate methane emissions from the oil and gas industry

The Permian Basin in west Texas and southeast New Mexico (United States) is one of the most productive oil and gas (O&G) basins in the world, but little methane emissions data have been collected from the region.  Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is leading a year-long science and advocacy campaign to measure O&G methane emissions in the Permian Basin and quickly communicate the data to stakeholders including the public and O&G operators to facilitate emission reductions. EDF and our scientific partners are using three primary approaches to repeatedly quantify emissions at different spatial scales during the campaign. Pennsylvania State University is estimating regional methane emissions on a quarterly basis with atmospheric transport modeling of data collected from a network of five tower-based instruments. University of Wyoming is deploying a mobile laboratory on public roads to measure site-level emissions of methane and volatile organic compounds with EPA Other Test Method 33A and the transect approach.  Scientific Aviation is performing aerial mass balance flights to quantify emissions from small clusters of sites, gridded areas, and larger regions.  Additionally, EDF is collaborating with several groups using remote sensing approaches to quantify methane emissions including TROPOMI, AVIRIS-NG, GAO, and MethaneAIR.  Emissions data including site identities will be published on a custom public website as quickly as possible to educate stakeholders about the magnitude of emissions and facilitate the mitigation of detected emission sources. Following the campaign, data will be analyzed to understand patterns and trends in emissions.  Furthermore, we will discuss the potential for implementing similar monitoring approaches in other O&G basins to provide scientifically-rigorous, actionable data that supports effective mitigation of methane emissions.