“These are really, really big events. These are the kinds of things that should just never be happening,” said Steven Hamburg, chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund who was not involved in the study but has long conducted research on methane, the world’s second-most-prevalent greenhouse gas behind carbon dioxide.
A group of scientists from France and the United States analyzed hundreds of large-emitting events between 2019 and 2020, using data collected by a European Space Agency satellite that orbits the planet 14 times a day. The new study concludes that super-emitting events represent 8 to 12 percent of global methane emissions from oil and gas operations — emissions that are not included in most national greenhouse gas inventories.
The researchers documented enormous releases around the globe, primarily from fossil fuel operations in places such as Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran, as well as in the United States and parts of the Middle East.
Hamburg said reducing such disastrous leaks, known as “super” or “ultra” emitters, amounts to “low-hanging fruit” in the quest to mitigate the worsening impacts of global warming.
Finding ways to eliminate such colossal and unnecessary leaks, whether they result from damaged pipelines or shoddy maintenance practices, the authors write, could yield economic benefits and would produce clear climate and health benefits for relatively low costs. They calculate that eradicating ultra-emitters would represent the equivalent of removing 20 million vehicles from the road for a year, and the avoided warming would prevent an estimated 1,600 deaths annually due to heat exposure.