Full Title: Remote sensing of fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas production in North American tight geologic formations
Author(s): Oliver Schneising, John P. Burrows, Russell R. Dickerson, Michael Buchwitz, Maximilian Reuter, and Heinrich Bovensmann
Publisher(s): Earth's Future
Publication Date: September 1, 2014
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Description (excerpt):
In the past decade, there has been a massive growth in the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of shale gas and tight oil reservoirs to exploit formerly inaccessible or unprofitable energy resources in rock formations with low permeability. In North America, these unconventional domestic sources of natural gas and oil provide an opportunity to achieve energy self-sufficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when displacing coal as a source of energy in power plants. However, fugitive methane emissions in the production process may counter the benefit over coal with respect to climate change and therefore need to be well quantified. Here we demonstrate that positive methane anomalies associated with the oil and gas industries can be detected from space and that corresponding regional emissions can be constrained using satellite observations.