US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements

Evan D. Sherwin (), Jeffrey S. Rutherford, Zhan Zhang, Yuanlei Chen, Erin B. Wetherley, Petr V. Yakovlev, Elena S. F. Berman, Brian B. Jones, Daniel H. Cusworth, Andrew K. Thorpe, Alana K. Ayasse, Riley M. Duren and Adam R. Brandt
Additional contact information
Evan D. Sherwin: Stanford University
Jeffrey S. Rutherford: Stanford University
Zhan Zhang: Stanford University
Yuanlei Chen: Stanford University
Erin B. Wetherley: Kairos Aerospace
Petr V. Yakovlev: Kairos Aerospace
Elena S. F. Berman: Kairos Aerospace
Brian B. Jones: Kairos Aerospace
Daniel H. Cusworth: Carbon Mapper
Andrew K. Thorpe: California Institute of Technology
Alana K. Ayasse: Carbon Mapper
Riley M. Duren: Carbon Mapper
Adam R. Brandt: Stanford University

Nature, 2024, vol. 627, issue 8003, 328-334

Abstract: Abstract As airborne methane surveys of oil and gas systems continue to discover large emissions that are missing from official estimates1–4, the true scope of methane emissions from energy production has yet to be quantified. We integrate approximately one million aerial site measurements into regional emissions inventories for six regions in the USA, comprising 52% of onshore oil and 29% of gas production over 15 aerial campaigns. We construct complete emissions distributions for each, employing empirically grounded simulations to estimate small emissions. Total estimated emissions range from 0.75% (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.65%, 0.84%) of covered natural gas production in a high-productivity, gas-rich region to 9.63% (95% CI 9.04%, 10.39%) in a rapidly expanding, oil-focused region. The six-region weighted average is 2.95% (95% CI 2.79%, 3.14%), or roughly three times the national government inventory estimate5. Only 0.05–1.66% of well sites contribute the majority (50–79%) of well site emissions in 11 out of 15 surveys. Ancillary midstream facilities, including pipelines, contribute 18–57% of estimated regional emissions, similarly concentrated in a small number of point sources. Together, the emissions quantified here represent an annual loss of roughly US$1 billion in commercial gas value and a US$9.3 billion annual social cost6. Repeated, comprehensive, regional remote-sensing surveys offer a path to detect these low-frequency, high-consequence emissions for rapid mitigation, incorporation into official emissions inventories and a clear-eyed assessment of the most effective emission-finding technologies for a given region.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07117-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:627:y:2024:i:8003:d:10.1038_s41586-024-07117-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07117-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().