Abstract
The duration of super-emitting events (>100 kg h-1) in oil and gas basins remains insufficiently understood but is key for reporting programs and mitigation strategies. Carbon Mapper conducted aerial surveys from April 30 to May 17, 2024, over the New Mexico Permian Basin, covering 276,000 wells, 1100 compressor stations, 175 gas processing plants, and 27,000 km of pipeline. We find over 500 super-emitting sources with 300 of these sources observed repeatedly across multiple days. We quantify total super emissions by integrating individual events with observationally constrained event durations (5.98 −14.7 Gg CH4) and compare to total emissions derived from basin average snapshots (12.7 ± 0.92 Gg CH4). This gap between emission estimates is reconciled through assumptions on missed detections, characteristic event duration, detection frequency, and diurnal variability. Emission events generally lasted for at least 2 hours, and a small subset of sources (18 total), persistently emitted throughout the entire campaign, representing a near-term opportunity for mitigation. When compared to regional flux estimates derived from independent observations, we estimate super-emitters to contribute approximately 50% (37-73%) towards total emissions. Frequent wide-area monitoring is crucial for capturing rare super-emitter events that, together with other emission sources, drive basin-level variability and emission intensity.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Plume datasets are generally available via Carbon Mapper’s Public Data Portal (data.carbonmapper.org). TROPOMI XCH4 data is available via the Registry of Open Data on Amazon Web Services (https://registry.opendata.aws/sentinel5p/). Source Data to reproduce figures are deposited in a Zenodo public repository32.
Code availability
The IMI source code is available online (https://carboninversion.com/). Source code to reproduce figures and analyses in this study is deposited in a Zenodo public repository32.
References
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Standards of performance for new, reconstructed, and modified sources and emissions guidelines for existing sources: oil and natural gas sector climate review. Fed. Regist. 40, CFR Part 60 (2024). Available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/08/2024-00366 (accessed 10 Mar 2025).
Sherwin, E. D. et al. US oil and gas system emissions from nearly one million aerial site measurements. Nature 627, 328–334 (2024).
Naus, S. et al. Assessing the relative importance of satellite-detected methane superemitters in quantifying total emissions for oil and gas production areas in Algeria. Environ. Sci. Technol. 57, 19545–19556 (2023).
Lauvaux, T. et al. Global assessment of oil and gas methane ultra-emitters. Science 375, 557–561 (2022).
Cusworth, D. H. et al. Strong methane point sources contribute a disproportionate fraction of total emissions across multiple basins in the United States. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2202338119 (2022).
Pandey, S. et al. Relating multi-scale plume detection and area estimates of methane emissions: a theoretical and empirical analysis. Environ. Sci. Technol. 59, 7931–7947 (2025).
Omara, M. et al. Methane emissions from US low-production oil and natural gas well sites. Nat. Commun. 13, 2085 (2022).
Williams, J. P. et al. Small emission sources disproportionately account for a large majority of total methane emissions from the US oil and gas sector. EGUsphere 2024 1, 31 (2024).
Chen, Z. et al. Comparing continuous methane monitoring technologies for high-volume emissions: a single-blind controlled release study. ACS ES&T Air https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestair.4c00015 (2024).
Conrad, B. M., Tyner, D. R., Li, H. Z., Xie, D. & Johnson, M. R. A measurement-based upstream oil and gas methane inventory for Alberta, Canada reveals higher emissions and different sources than official estimates. Commun. Earth Environ. 4, 416 (2023).
Johnson, M. R., Conrad, B. M. & Tyner, D. R. Creating measurement-based oil and gas sector methane inventories using source-resolved aerial surveys. Commun. Earth Environ. 4, 139 (2023).
Kunkel, W. M. et al. Extension of methane emission rate distribution for Permian Basin oil and gas production infrastructure by aerial LiDAR. Environ. Sci. Technol. 57, 12234–12241 (2023).
Cusworth, D. H. et al. Intermittency of large methane emitters in the Permian Basin. Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 8, 567–573 (2021).
Chen, Y. et al. Quantifying regional methane emissions in the New Mexico Permian Basin with a comprehensive aerial survey. Environ. Sci. Technol. 56, 4317–4323 (2022).
Sherwin, E. et al. Comprehensive aerial surveys find a reduction in Permian Basin methane intensity from 2020–2023. SSRN Preprint https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5087216 (2024).
El Abbadi, S. H. et al. Technological maturity of aircraft-based methane sensing for greenhouse gas mitigation. Environ. Sci. Technol. 58, 9591–9600 (2024).
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Petroleum and natural gas systems subpart W: Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (2024). Available at https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2025-01/w_petroleumnaturalgassystems_infosheet_2024.pdf (accessed 6 Feb 2025).
Yang, S. L. & Ravikumar, A. P. Assessing the performance of point sensor continuous monitoring systems at midstream natural gas compressor stations. ACS ES&T Air 2, 466–475 (2025).
Ayasse, A. K. et al. Performance and sensitivity of column-wise and pixel-wise methane retrievals for imaging spectrometers. Atmos. Meas. Tech. 16, 6065–6074 (2023).
Veefkind, J. P. et al. TROPOMI on the ESA sentinel-5 precursor: a GMES mission for global observations of atmospheric composition. Remote Sens. Environ. 120, 70–83 (2012).
Varon, D. J. et al. Continuous weekly monitoring of methane emissions from the Permian Basin by inversion of TROPOMI satellite observations. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss. 2022, 1–26 (2022).
Estrada, L. A. et al. Integrated Methane Inversion (IMI) 2.0: an improved research and stakeholder tool for monitoring total methane emissions worldwide. EGUsphere 2024 1, 31 (2024).
Barkley, Z. R., Davis, K. J., Miles, N. L. & Richardson, S. J. Examining daily temporal characteristics of oil and gas methane emissions in the Delaware Basin using continuous tower observations. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 130, e2024JD042050 (2025).
Lyon, D. R. et al. Concurrent variation in oil and gas methane emissions and oil price during the COVID-19 pandemic. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 21, 6605–6626 (2021).
Warren, J. D. et al. Sectoral contributions of high-emitting methane point sources from major US onshore oil and gas producing basins using airborne measurements from MethaneAIR. EGUsphere 2024, 1–22 (2024).
Guanter, L. et al. Remote sensing of methane point sources with the MethaneAIR airborne spectrometer. EGUsphere 2025, 1–22 (2025).
Zimmerle, D., Dileep, S. & Quinn, C. Unaddressed uncertainties when scaling regional aircraft emission surveys to basin emission estimates. Environ. Sci. Technol. 58, 6575–6585 (2024).
Schubert, E., Sander, J., Ester, M., Kriegel, H. P. & Xu, X. DBSCAN revisited, revisited: why and how you should (still) use DBSCAN. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 42, 1–21 (2017).
Balasus, N. et al. A blended TROPOMI+GOSAT satellite data product for atmospheric methane using machine learning to correct retrieval biases. Atmos. Meas. Tech. 16, 3787–3807 (2023).
Hancock, S. E. et al. Satellite quantification of methane emissions from South American countries: a high-resolution inversion of TROPOMI and GOSAT observations. EGUsphere 2024, 1–33 (2024).
Varon, D. J. et al. Seasonality and declining intensity of methane emissions from the Permian and nearby US oil and gas basins. Environ. Sci. Technol. 59, 16021–16033 (2025).
Cusworth, D. Data and code to accompany “Duration of super-emitting oil and gas methane sources”. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17862303 (2024).
Acknowledgments
The Carbon Mapper team acknowledges the support of their sponsors, including the High Tide Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and other philanthropic donors. Portions of the Carbon Mapper work were funded by the NASA Carbon Monitoring System. The Global Airborne Observatory (GAO) is managed by the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science at Arizona State University. The GAO is made possible by support from private foundations, visionary individuals, and Arizona State University. Work by E.D.S. and S.C.B. was supported by the California Energy Commission (SUMMATION project, agreement number PIR-17-015). It does not necessarily represent the views of the Energy Commission, its employees, or the State of California. The Energy Commission, the State of California, its employees, contractors, and subcontractors make no warranty, express or implied, and assume no legal liability for the information in this report; nor does any party represent that the use of this information will not infringe upon privately owned rights. This paper has not been approved or disapproved by the California Energy Commission, nor has the California Energy Commission passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the information in this paper. This manuscript has been authored by authors at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges, that the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.H.C. designed the study, performed the main analysis, and wrote the manuscript. D.B., A.A., and R.M.D. performed additional analyses of plume datasets. G.P.A. and J.H. acquired GAO data. D.J.V. performed the TROPOMI regional flux inversion. E.D.S. and S.C.B. performed additional statistical and uncertainty analyses. D.B, A.A, R.M.D, G.P.A, J.H, D.J.V, E.D.S, and S.C.B provided feedback on the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Cusworth, D.H., Bon, D.M., Varon, D.J. et al. Duration of super-emitting oil and gas methane sources. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68804-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68804-7
