HomeNewsCarbon Mapper's Tanager-1 Flags, Mitigates Methane Leak in Permian Gathering Pipeline

Carbon Mapper's Tanager-1 Flags, Mitigates Methane Leak in Permian Gathering Pipeline

11/18/2024

Mary Holcomb, Digital Editor

(P&GJ) — Carbon Mapper released over 300 methane and CO2 plume detections today— its first tranche of emissions data based on observations from the Tanager-1 satellite which was launched in August.

Tanager-1 is built and operated by Planet Labs PBC and made possible by the Carbon Mapper Coalition, a philanthropically backed public-private partnership including Planet Labs and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory among others. This data offers granularity on sources of super-emitters around the world, driving direct actions to cut methane and carbon dioxide as proven by an early mitigation success story.

Left - a large methane plume from a leaking oil and gas pipeline was detected in the Texas Permian Basin by Tanager-1 on Oct. 9. After being shared with federal and state agencies, the leak was voluntarily fixed by the operator. Right - a subsequent Tanager observation on Oct. 24 detected no methane.

On Oct. 9, Tanager-1 detected a large plume of methane which Carbon Mapper determined was stemming from a gathering pipeline in the Texas Permian Basin. The team reported the leak to a state agency and the U.S. government, who subsequently notified the facility operator. The operator quickly responded and voluntarily conducted repairs, leading to meaningful emissions reduction. Follow up observations from Tanager-1 detected no plume, confirming the leak was successfully fixed.

Carbon Mapper's preliminary emissions estimate of this leak is approximately 7,000 kilograms of methane per hour. Each hour it was emitting equaled the same CO2 emissions as driving 47 gas-powered cars for a year.

This first verified methane mitigation action adds to existing evidence that when decision makers are empowered with data on the exact sources of emissions, they can effectively prioritize actions that cut waste and eliminate methane. This mitigation is consistent with pilot airborne surveys Carbon Mapper has conducted in several U.S. states including California and Colorado. Through these pilots, Carbon Mapper has found that nearly half of super-emitting events flagged for state agencies and operators were previously unknown, and once identified, were voluntarily mitigated.

"Tackling methane quickly is a crucial global priority,” Carbon Mapper CEO Riley Duren said. “This early mitigation success story shows that remote sensing technologies with unique capabilities like Tanager-1 can be a gamechanger in driving down emissions in the near-term."

To scale these local mitigation successes globally, Carbon Mapper is making new data from Tanager-1 publicly available on its data portal. These include detections of methane and CO2 in 34 countries across the oil and gas, waste, and agriculture sectors. This work is supported by the High Tide Foundation, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Children's Investment Fund Foundation, AKO Foundation, and Zegar Family Foundation, among others.

In the coming months, Carbon Mapper will continue to scale up observations and make methane and CO2 data routinely accessible to help decision makers fill gaps in their understanding of the exact sources of emissions and empower mitigation action at the source. These routine detections will be made publicly available for non-commercial use 30 days after collection. Together, with complementary satellite programs, like the Environmental Defense Fund's MethaneSAT, Carbon Mapper will provide transparent data at different levels of granularity and ensure that the information gets into the right hands to catalyze faster and more effective emissions reductions.

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