Abstract. Mitigating anthropogenic methane emissions is widely recognized as an effective strategy to reduce near-term climate warming. Here, we use satellite observations from MethaneSAT (2024–2025) to characterize methane emissions from six oil and gas producing regions as a demonstration of MethaneSAT data capabilities. MethaneSAT was designed to address a gap in quantitative data of spatially-resolved emissions, by providing high-resolution area emissions (∼4km×4km) with a wide-swath (220–440 km). The native pixel resolution of MethaneSAT is ∼110m×400m (at nadir) at which the column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of methane is retrieved before atmospheric inversion-based methane emissions data are produced. We analyze emissions data across six oil and gas producing regions: the Permian (USA), San Joaquin (USA), Eagle Ford (USA/Mexico), Amu Darya (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), and the Zagros Foldbelt (Iran/Iraq). Regional oil and gas emissions span more than an order of magnitude, ranging from 408 t h−1 (95 % c.i.: 303–516 t h−1) for the Permian basin to 30 t h−1 (95 % c.i.: 20–41 t h−1) in the San Joaquin basin. Methane intensities also vary substantially by more than an order of magnitude in both gas-production-normalized and energy-normalized metrics. These differences reflect diverse factors, including oil versus gas production, infrastructure age, lower-producing wells, and emission mitigation controls. Across individual jurisdictions, including counties/districts, we find consistent underestimation by gridded EPA-GHGI and EDGAR bottom-up inventories relative to MethaneSAT-derived emissions. Overall, MethaneSAT data provide basin-wide and sub-regional insights into methane emissions and intensities, offering critical scientific and policy-relevant information to support targeted emission quantification and mitigation strategies.
Williams et al. (2026) studied this question.