
Designed to track methane emissions from oil and gas operations globally, MethaneSAT not only identifies and reports “hot spots” where methane is present in high concentrations, but also shares data publicly and for free. Started by MethaneSAT, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) working with the New Zealand Space Agency. Blue Canyon Technologies and Ball Aerospace partnered, SpaceX carried the satellite into orbit. Scientists from around the world have worked together cooperatively to complete the mission. The team that came together to form and lead MethaneSAT, and the data shared, are 2024’s Voice of the Future.

Eye in the Sky — with a Voice, MethaneSAT launched on March 4, 2024 (note that is “March Forth” when spoken). By July 2024, the satellite reported oil and gas industry methane emissions were 3 – 5 times higher than even the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had estimated, which was of course higher than industry members had estimated.

Hot spots: Permian Basin in the US was found to be belching methane at 640,000 pounds – per hour, 9 times industry-set rate. Utah’s Uinta Basin was found emitting methane at 45 times industry-set rate. Amu Darya and South Caspian Basin in Turkmenistan and Maturin Basin in Venezuela were also notable. MethaneSAT’s Senior lead scientist Ritesh Gautam noted the findings as: “extraordinary in the precision of the data.” (Nilsen and Paddison 2024).
Focusing on the gas and oil industry was MethaneSAT’s strategy because that industry is a known emitter, has a concentrated number of players with ample budgets. As Steven Hamburg of Environmental Defense Fund, and MethaneSAT Mission Lead, stated: “The ability to remediate is much greater.” (Simon, 2024). Among the benefits of MethaneSAT’s continuous monitoring is the ability to track improvements, a way to report progress on Oil & Gas Decarbonization Charter (OGDC) established at COP28, and Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR).

Methane is the most potent of greenhouse gases, responsible for 30% of emissions. So, methane should be the first target. And within the methane emitting industries, oil and gas is the best first step or as Rob Jackson of Stanford University and head of the Global Carbon Project said, the oil and gas industry is “low-hanging fruit.”
Is it harvest time? Click here.
Environmental Defense Fund. “Help Us Slow Global Warming Fast.” VIDEO. https://www.edf.org/launch
MethaneSAT Team. https://www.methanesat.org/team
Nilsen, Ella and Laura Paddison. “New images show where super-polluters are venting an invisible, planet-warming gas into the atmosphere.” 27 November 2024. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/27/climate/methane-polluters-satellite?cid=ios_app
Simon, Julia. “A new satellite will track climate-warming pollution. Here’s why that’s a big deal.” 5 March 2024. NPR AUDIO plus text: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235694992/a-new-satellite-will-track-climate-warming-pollution-heres-why-thats-a-big-deal
Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G. Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 U