Small oil and gas sites leave big methane footprint — study

By Carlos Anchondo | 02/04/2025 06:56 AM EST

The authors of a new report examined the role of locations not found in the “super-emitter” category.

A flare burns methane from oil production.

A flare burns methane from oil production near Watford City, North Dakota. Matthew Brown/AP

Low-emitting oil and natural gas facilities make up an outsize chunk of the sector’s methane footprint in the United States despite their “poorly understood” contribution to overall emissions, according to a new study.

The report, published Tuesday in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, determined that 70 percent of all oil and gas methane emissions from the continental United States come from facilities emitting less than 100 kilograms of the greenhouse gas an hour. In some basins, such as the Permian and the San Joaquin in the western U.S., the percentage is even higher.

Facilities “with low emissions are consistently found to account for the majority of total basin emissions,” the study’s authors wrote, citing 2021 data.

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While curbing emissions from “high-emitting facilities is important, it is not sufficient for the overall mitigation of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector,” the authors said.

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