Satellite Data Reveals How to Fix a Global Methane Hotspot
Repairing 29 pieces of oil and gas equipment in western Turkmenistan would significantly reduce the region’s climate impact, study finds.
In the western Turkmenistan desert, 29 pieces of oil and gas equipment have been spewing enough methane each year to rival the annual emissions from all the cars in Alabama. According to new research, that damage is mostly the result of poorly maintained or leaky equipment — and largely avoidable.
With the help of satellite data, scientists have identified the biggest sources of emissions in one of the world’s methane hotspots. From January 2017 to November 2020, a total of 944 releases were observed from fewer than 30 sources; of those, two dozen came from faulty flares that had stopped combusting super-potent methane into less harmful carbon dioxide. It isn’t clear if the flares simply went out and need to be relit — a procedure familiar to most energy operators — or if they had larger glitches.
Without functioning flares, the methane is released directly into the atmosphere, where it has 84 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide. Because they come from commercial facilities, “they represent a key mitigation opportunity," researchers including Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate and Luis Guanter from the Polytechnic University of Valencia wrote. Their paper was published Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology.