The Permian Basin, straddling Texas and New Mexico, emits four times more methane than the EPA officially declares. This is not an activist estimate: it is what MethaneSAT measures, the satellite launched in 2024 by the Environmental Defense Fund for 88 million dollars. Globally, according to the IEA, energy-related methane emissions are approximately 80 percent higher than official figures—the often-cited figure of 50 percent is on the low end; reality is probably more severe.

Measurement technology exists. Capture technologies are mature. Methane dissipates in roughly a dozen years in the atmosphere, compared to centuries for CO₂: acting quickly produces effects quickly. The only obstacle is political.

The Essentials

  • The IEA estimates that global energy-related methane emissions are approximately 80 percent higher than official figures (Global Methane Tracker 2025).
  • MethaneSAT, an 88-million-dollar satellite operated by the Environmental Defense Fund, measured emissions four times higher than EPA declarations for the Permian Basin.
  • New Mexico mandates 98 percent capture of fugitive emissions and achieves it; neighboring Texas, without comparable regulation, emits without constraint.
  • Methane has a warming potential 80 times greater than CO₂ over 20 years, but its atmospheric lifespan is short: reducing emissions now produces a measurable climate effect within a few years.
  • The International Energy Agency estimates that 40 percent of methane emissions from the gas sector could be eliminated at net-zero cost, with recovered hydrocarbons covering equipment costs.

A Satellite Disrupts Official Inventories

MethaneSAT is not the first instrument to measure methane from space. But it combines sufficient resolution to identify emission zones of a few square kilometers with global coverage that allows monitoring of the same basins week after week. It is this regularity that makes its data compelling.

Over the Permian Basin, the United States’ leading oil-producing basin, the satellite detected atmospheric concentrations that, once modeled, indicate emission flows four times higher than figures transmitted by operators to the EPA. An EDF study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in February 2025 provides additional insight into the distribution of these emissions across the United States: approximately 70 percent of methane emissions from the American oil and gas sector come from small dispersed sources, which complicates targeted control strategies. The first major scientific publication directly using MethaneSAT’s orbital data in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics dates to May 2026, covering emission intensity in several global basins including the Permian and Eagle Ford.

The gap between atmospheric measurements and official inventories is no surprise to researchers who have worked in this field for a decade. Earlier studies based on instrumented aircraft and first-generation satellites had already flagged significant underreporting. What changes with MethaneSAT is continuity and spatial resolution: emissions can now be attributed to specific basins, even to clusters of installations, and their evolution tracked over time.

What the data shows is important: emissions are not uniformly distributed. In most basins, a minority of installations produces the majority of emissions. Field studies on the Permian Basin have consistently found that 10 to 20 percent of wells and processing infrastructure generate more than half of total emissions. This is good news, not bad: targeting a small number of sources enables substantial reductions without restructuring the entire sector.

Why Methane Is the Climate Shortcut No One Wants to Take

Methane has a warming potential 80 times greater than CO₂ over a 20-year horizon. Over 100 years, this factor drops to around 30, which explains why institutional carbon balances have long downplayed it: long-term comparisons favor it arithmetically. But it is precisely this short atmospheric lifespan, roughly a dozen years on average, that makes it the most powerful lever for slowing warming in the short term.

Reducing CO₂ emissions produces climate effects over decades. Reducing methane emissions produces measurable effects within a few years. For 2030 climate commitments, it is the only variable on which governments can still exert pressure with visible results within the promised timeframe.

The IEA has calculated that 40 percent of methane emissions from the global gas sector could be eliminated at zero or negative cost. Captured leaks represent sellable gas. Installing detectors, repairing defective valves, replacing atmospheric purges with recovery systems: the technologies exist, have been deployed for decades in certain basins, and their cost is covered by revenues from captured gas when prices are sufficiently high. On current gas markets, the breakeven threshold is widely met.

The problem is therefore not economic. It is not technological either. It is regulatory, and the example comes from two neighboring American states.

New Mexico and Texas: The Same Basin, Two Policies, Two Results

The Permian Basin straddles Texas and New Mexico. Both states extract oil and gas from the same geological formations, with the same operators, the same equipment. In 2021, New Mexico introduced regulations requiring the capture of 98 percent of methane emissions associated with oil and gas production. Texas imposed no equivalent obligation.

MethaneSAT data allows comparison of both sides of the border on the same basin. Emissions per unit of production are significantly lower on the New Mexico side. Operators working in both states apply stricter standards where they are required and more lenient standards where they are not.

This is a real-world demonstration. It invalidates the argument that strict standards would be unapplicable or economically destructive: the same companies, with the same technologies, achieve 98 percent capture when regulation requires it. The additional operational cost is real but absorbable, as evidenced by the continued activity on the New Mexico side.

The European Union drew a similar conclusion with the methane regulation adopted in 2024, which imposes measurement, reporting, and reduction obligations on energy sector operators active on the European market, including liquefied natural gas importers. It is an indirect regulatory lever on foreign producers wanting access to the European market. Its effectiveness will depend on implementation methods, still being defined, and the robustness of verification mechanisms.

Transparency as a Precondition for Regulation

The classic argument against methane regulation has long been data uncertainty. How to impose reduction obligations if you do not know precisely where emissions are located and in what quantities? MethaneSAT and similar measurement tools directly address this argument.

The satellite provides publicly accessible data. The Environmental Defense Fund deliberately chose this open model: measurements are made available to regulators, researchers, journalists, and investors. A pension fund that owns shares in an oil operator can now compare emissions declared by the company to independent atmospheric measurements. A regulator can identify basins deserving priority inspection. An NGO can point out gaps between companies’ voluntary commitments and their actual emissions.

This transparency creates pressure that did not exist five years ago. It does not replace regulation, but it changes the balance of power. Governments choosing not to regulate methane now make that choice under observation. The data are public. Inaction is documented.

Other satellites monitoring greenhouse gas emissions complement this picture. The European Union’s Copernicus program, with its TROPOMI instrument aboard the Sentinel-5P satellite, has produced global methane maps since 2017. GHGSat, a Canadian company, operates a constellation of small satellites capable of attributing emissions to individual facilities. Coverage remains incomplete and data have temporal and spatial resolution limitations, but the sector is advancing rapidly. Within a decade, it will be difficult for a significant operator to conceal substantial emissions.

What the Numbers Cost in Inaction

Translating the gap between actual emissions and official inventories into climate terms gives an idea of what is at stake. The IEA estimates that global energy-related methane emissions are approximately 80 percent higher than official figures—a gap that directly weighs on actual emission trajectories. However, climate models and their temperature projections are not based on these self-reported inventories: they use methane concentrations measured directly in the atmosphere. Underreporting of government inventories thus does not invalidate climate projections, which are calibrated to atmospheric observations. It does illustrate, however, the scope of the regulatory effort still needed for reduction policies to match the reality of emissions.

The United Nations Environment Programme co-launched with the IEA the International Methane Emissions Observatory, which compiles measurement data and compares them to national inventories. Its reports show that some countries declare emissions compliant with IPCC standards but atmospheric measurements suggest significantly higher levels, notably in Russia, Turkmenistan, and Iran for the gas sector, and in several producing countries for the oil sector.

Energy infrastructure issues often have ramifications beyond carbon accounting alone. Data centers, for example, already place considerable pressure on water and energy consumption without externalities being fully internalized in investment decisions. Methane illustrates the same logic: externalities remain off the books until regulation incorporates them.

The economic argument for action is also direct. Methane leaks represent gas that does not sell. At 10 dollars per million BTU, global fugitive emissions from the oil and gas sector represent several tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue each year. Some of this money would easily finance detection and capture equipment.

What New Mexico Taught Regulators

New Mexico’s regulation was contested by industry before taking effect. Opponents predicted unsustainable costs, unprofitable wells shuttering, declining production. Three years after implementation, none of this occurred. New Mexico’s oil and gas production continued to grow, operators adapted their practices, and emissions per unit of production fell.

This result is not isolated. Norway has long imposed strict standards on its offshore sector and remains one of the world’s most competitive hydrocarbon producers. Canada strengthened its federal methane regulation in 2024 with the objective of reducing emissions from the sector by 75 percent by 2030 compared to 2012 levels. The Canadian industry, after initial resistance, has largely accepted the trajectory.

The convergent lesson from these experiences is that ambitious regulation and hydrocarbon production are compatible. What is not compatible is ambitious regulation and maintaining existing practices without investment: operators must change what they do, and some aging equipment is not worth the cost of upgrading. But technological advances in mobilizing secondary resources show that entire industrial sectors can adapt when the rules of the game change.

The challenge for coming years is geographic extension. Major production basins outside OECD countries, notably in the Middle East, Russia, and sub-Saharan Africa, operate without equivalent constraint. The European methane import regulation creates an indirect incentive mechanism, but limited to quantities exported to Europe. Broader international cooperation, within the framework of the Glasgow Commitment signed in 2021 by more than 150 countries, remains the only avenue for closing the gap on production that does not reach regulated markets.

The Glasgow Commitment pledged to reduce global methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. According to initial estimates from the International Methane Emissions Observatory, policies currently in place, even if fully implemented, lead to reductions well below this objective. The gap between stated ambition and existing binding regulations remains considerable.

The question is not whether instruments exist to measure emissions, reduce them, and verify effects. They exist. The question is which governments will choose, within the next two to three years, to transform voluntary commitments into verifiable obligations. New Mexico showed that it works. MethaneSAT shows that inaction is now visible from space.

Sources

  1. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, study on global oil and gas methane emissions (February 2026): https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/26/5961/2026/
  2. Environmental Defense Fund, MethaneSAT: https://www.edf.org/methanesat
  3. International Energy Agency, Methane and Energy report: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2024
  4. United Nations Environment Programme, International Methane Emissions Observatory: https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/energy/what-we-do/methane/international-methane-emissions-observatory
  5. European Methane Regulation (2024), Official Journal of the European Union: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32024R1788
  6. Global Methane Pledge, text and signatories: https://www.globalmethanepledge.org
  7. MethaneSAT – launch March 2024: https://www.edf.org/media/methanesat-launching-today-groundbreaking-mission-protect-climate
  8. IEA Global Methane Tracker 2025 – emissions 80 percent higher than declarations: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2025/key-findings
  9. NM Methane Waste Rule – 98 percent capture: https://www.climateaction.nm.gov/emnrd/methane-waste-rule/
  10. IEA – 40 percent reductions oil/gas at net-zero cost: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2024/methane-emissions-in-a-15-0c-pathway
  11. EU Methane Regulation 2024/1787: https://academic.oup.com/jwelb/article/18/1/jwae022/7823205
  12. Global Methane Pledge – 30 percent by 2030 vs 2020: https://www.globalmethanepledge.org/
  13. EDF/MethaneSAT – NM intensity 1.2 percent vs TX 3.1 percent: https://www.edf.org/methanesat-observations-reveal-lower-methane-intensity-new-mexicos-permian-basin-associated
  14. EDF/ACP Study – dispersed sources, February 2025: https://www.methanesat.org/project-updates/study-smaller-dispersed-sources-account-majority-us-oil-gas-methane-emissions
  15. UNEP – Global Methane Status Report COP30 Nov. 2025: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/ministers-urge-decisive-methane-action-global-report-shows-progress