EGU21-15877
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15877
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Satellite-based characterization of methane point sources in the Permian Basin

Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate1, Luis Guanter1, Yin-Nian Liu2, Daniel J. Varon3, Joannes D. Maasakkers4, Yuzhong Zhang5,6, Apisada Chulakadabba3, Steven C. Wofsy3, Andrew K. Thorpe7, Riley M. Duren7,8, Christian Frankenberg7,9, David Lyon10, Daniel H. Cusworth7, Yongguang Zhang11, Karl Segl12, Javier Gorroño1, Elena Sánchez-García1, Melissa P. Sulprizio3, Ilse Aben4, and Daniel J. Jacob3
Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate et al.
  • 1Research Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA), Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Valencia, Spain.
  • 2CAS Key Laboratory of Infrared System Detection and Imaging Technology, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Shanghai, China.
  • 3School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
  • 4SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, Netherlands.
  • 5Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province (KLaCER), School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
  • 6Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province (KLaCER), School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
  • 7Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
  • 8University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
  • 9California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
  • 10Environmental Defense Fund, Austin, TX, USA.
  • 11International Institute for Earth System Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
  • 12Helmholtz Center Potsdam, GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany.

The Permian Basin is known for its extensive oil and gas production, which has increased rapidly in recent years becoming the largest producing basin in the United States. It is also responsible for almost half of the methane emissions from all oil and gas producing regions in the country. Given the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is crucial to identify and characterize the point sources of emissions. To this end, we have combined three new high-resolution hyperspectral sensors data onboard the GF-5, ZY1 and PRIMA satellites to create the first regional study to identify methane sources and measure the emitted quantities from each source. With data collected over several days in 2019 and 2020, we have identified a total of 37 point source emissions with flux rates >500kg/h, that is, a high concentration of extreme emission point sources that account for nearly 40% of the Permian annual emissions. Also, we have found that new infrastructure (post-2018) is responsible for almost 60% of the detected emissions, in many cases (21% of the cases) due to inefficient use of flaring of the gas that they cannot store. With this study, we demonstrate that hyperspectral satellite data are a powerful tool for the detection and quantification of strong methane point emissions.

How to cite: Irakulis-Loitxate, I., Guanter, L., Liu, Y.-N., Varon, D. J., Maasakkers, J. D., Zhang, Y., Chulakadabba, A., Wofsy, S. C., Thorpe, A. K., Duren, R. M., Frankenberg, C., Lyon, D., Cusworth, D. H., Zhang, Y., Segl, K., Gorroño, J., Sánchez-García, E., Sulprizio, M. P., Aben, I., and Jacob, D. J.: Satellite-based characterization of methane point sources in the Permian Basin, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15877, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15877, 2021.

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