Yuanlei Chen: Comprehensive aerial survey in the New Mexico Permian Basin reveals missing super emitters

Comprehensive aerial survey in the New Mexico Permian Basin reveals missing super emitters

Abstract

Limiting emissions of climate-warming methane from oil and gas (O&G) is a major opportunity for short-term climate benefits. We deploy a basin-wide airborne survey of the New Mexico Permian Basin, spanning 35,923 km^2, 26,292 active wells, and over 15,000 km of natural gas pipelines using an independently-validated hyperspectral methane point source detection and quantification system. The airborne survey repeatedly visited over 90% of the active wells in the survey region throughout October 2018 to January 2020, totaling 117,658 well visits. We estimate total O&G methane emissions in this area at 194 (+72/-68, 95% CI) metric tonnes per hour (t/h), or 9.4% (+3.5%/-3.3%) of gross gas production. With 50% of observed emissions come from large emission sources with persistence-averaged emission rates over 308 kg/h, the new data compels the use of new technologies that are capable of capturing and quantifying these low-probability, high-consequence events through basin-wide surveys when estimating regional O&G methane emissions. 

Bio

Yuanlei Chen is a PhD student in Adam Brandt’s lab at Stanford studying greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas operations. Her current research focuses on testing and synthesizing broader insights from airborne methane detection and quantification technologies, for both onshore and offshore applications, using a combination of engineering knowledge, data collection in the field, applied statistics, computer vision, and remote sensing.