Global Tracking and Quantification of Oil and Gas Methane Leaks from Recurrent Sentinel-2 Imagery.

Methane (CH4) emissions estimates from top-down studies over oil and gas basins have revealed systematic under-estimation of CH4 emissions in current national inventories. Sparse but extremely large amounts of CH4 from oil and gas production activities have been detected across the globe, resulting in a significant increase of the overall O&G contribution. However, attribution to specific facilities remains a major challenge unless high-resolution images provide the sufficient granularity within O&G basin. In this paper, we monitor known oil-and-gas infrastructures across the globe using recurrent Sentinel-2 imagery to detect and quantify more than 800 CH4 leaks. In combination with leak emissions estimates from airborne and Sentinel-5P measurements, we demonstrate the robustness of the fit to a power law from 100 kgCH4/hr to 600 tCH4/hr. We conclude here that the prevalence of ultra-emitters (> 25 tCH4/hr) detected globally by Sentinel-5P directly relates to leak occurrences below its detection threshold. Similar power law coefficients arise from several major oil and gas producers but noticeable differences in leaks magnitudes suggest large differences in maintenance practices and infrastructures across countries.