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Earth

Satellite To 'Name and Shame' Worst Oil and Gas Methane Polluters (theguardian.com) 53

A washing-machine-sized satellite is to "name and shame" the worst methane polluters in the oil and gas industry. From a report: MethaneSat will provide the first near-comprehensive global view of leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil and gas sector, and all of the data will be made public. It will provide high-resolution data over wider areas than existing satellites. Methane, also called natural gas, is responsible for 30% of the global heating driving the climate crisis. Leaks from the fossil fuel industry are a major source of human-caused emissions and stemming these is the fastest single way to curb temperature rises.

MethaneSat was developed by the Environmental Defense Fund, a US NGO, in partnership with the New Zealand Space Agency and cost $88m to build and launch. Earlier EDF measurements from planes show methane emissions were 60% higher than calculated estimates published by US authorities and elsewhere. More than 150 countries have signed a global methane pledge to cut their emissions of the gas by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. Some oil and gas companies have made similar pledges, and new regulations to limit methane leaks are being worked on in the US, EU, Japan and South Korea.

The EDF's senior vice-president, Mark Brownstein, said: "MethaneSat is a tool for accountability . I'm sure many people think this could be used to name and shame companies who are poor emissions performers, and that's true. But [it] can [also] help document progress that leading companies are making in reducing their emissions." The oil and gas industry knows how to stop leaks and the cost of doing so is usually very modest, said Steven Hamburg, the EDF's chief scientist and MethaneSat project leader: "Some call it low hanging fruit. I like to call it fruit lying on the ground."

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Satellite To 'Name and Shame' Worst Oil and Gas Methane Polluters

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  • Private satellite (Score:5, Informative)

    by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2024 @04:04PM (#64295488) Homepage
    The article doesn't really point out the remarkable part about this, which is that it's a privately funded satellite. This really shows a change in the space economy.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/climat... [www.cbc.ca]

    • The article doesn't really point out the remarkable part about this, which is that it's a privately funded satellite. This really shows a change in the space economy.

      https://www.cbc.ca/news/climat... [www.cbc.ca]

      Does that mean a planet should trust their results to be devoid of all corruption and manipulation driven by the multi-trillion dollar Global Industrial Complex that intends to save a planet via highly-profitable scaremongering statistics?

      You know, cause that would be a first..

      • by mspohr ( 589790 )

        This was built by a US environmental NGO in cooperation with New Zealand.
        The data will be public.
        Hopefully, no fossil fuel influence.

      • We'll see if the pictures it takes line up with the absolutely unadulterated and 100% factual no reason to doublecheck data the moderately-profitable energy sector self reports.

        • We'll see if the pictures it takes line up with the absolutely unadulterated and 100% factual no reason to doublecheck data the moderately-profitable energy sector self reports.

          I could turn that around and point out this is a private organization with an agenda to shame people emitting methane using sensors that we have no idea were properly calibrated. This was a big deal with satellites measuring surface temperatures and there were the ground stations intended to calibrate the readings but the surface stations were put in suspect places. One example was an airport weather station placed where it would routinely get blasted with jet exhaust. If that station was being used for

    • The article doesn't really point out the remarkable part about this, which is that it's a privately funded satellite. This really shows a change in the space economy.

      Granted the barriers to entry have been lowered somewhat... But privately owned satellites have been around since the first commercial telecommunications birds back in the 1960's.

  • I hope it doesn't spend too much time over my house...

  • They aren't going to like the "shaming" part, especially the Chinese.

    And both have the capability to shoot it down.

    Interesting times...

    • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2024 @04:42PM (#64295640)

      And both have the capability to shoot it down.

      No one needs to shoot anything down. That's saber-rattling, that's grandstanding. Russia and China excel at this game, I've been watchign them do it since the 70's. They'll put out angry statements, maybe a few angry-sounding soundbites, and then no missile will be launched, no bullets unleashed.

      What will likely happen instead is the people with the money and reason to be embarrassed (China, Russia, and anyone else who stands to get egg-on-face about this) will apply pressure to the people they've compromised in the US, and nicely ask them to stop with the naming and shaming bit... or else, the money stops. No money, no running the satellite, no publishing the results.

      That's how this game is played. Not with bullets or missiles, but with bucks.

      That's how this game's played.

      • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

        They don't even need to 'apply pressure'. Those pushing the climatism agenda seem to focus almost exclusively on western countries when it comes to castigation and punitive regulation.

        One could wonder the reasons...but that's none of my business [sips tea].

    • They aren't going to like the "shaming" part, especially the Chinese.

      You’re talking about a country that to this day still claims less than 6,000 COVID deaths for well over a billion citizens. And the other country has been relentlessly warmongering on their own border and under “sanctions” that have proven to not deter a damn thing..

      And both have the capability to shoot it down.

      Interesting times...

      Making it disappear is a lot harder than simply not giving a flying fuck about “shaming”, which is exactly what China and Russia do. American media tries to sell otherwise, which is laughable at best.

    • by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
      nobody is going to take such an extreme action over climate data, at the absolute most they would assassinate whoever is operating it.
    • Russia and China are not going to pay the slightest attention to anything these guys say - if in fact they even know they are getting "shamed".

      Russia is invading other countries with no provocation and threatening to start nuking people almost daily, The Chinese are rapidly planning to invade a sovereign country over a similar specious claim. That is, when they aren't shipping out toxic baby food and putting the Uyghurs in concentration camps.

      I guarantee they do not care one in

    • by BigZee ( 769371 )
      On the other hand, this would allow countries to identify where they are losing methane and allow them to tap it.
    • Russia is on the list, but China barely qualifies. Their methane emissions are a fraction of those of just Texas. Canada and Turkmenistan are in for a shock, as is most of the middle east.

      No one is going to shoot this down. This satellite confirms with more accuracy what is already actively measured. You can already find shame maps.

  • Stinky companies
    Named and shamed, choking us out
    Stock price high as clouds

    • Escaped methane and oil are lost revenue, so maybe avoiding shame and potential divestment are enough to make these resources worth recovering.
  • The US for blowing up the NordStream pipelines.
    Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for not putting out those fires in their backyards for decades.

    But if I were such I country, I would just invest in this company and kick out the CEO.
    Nothing that money can't buy.

    • by lordlod ( 458156 )

      The fires are the solution, not the problem.

      If you have an oil well or processing facility which produces Methane as a waste product you have three options, vent it, flare it (burn it), or capture compress and store/sell it. The third is ideal but very expensive, particularly at smaller scale facilities. Flaring is cheap, but looks bad, you get people circulating photos with fields of venting fires. Venting just dumps the gas into the atmosphere, which is terrible for the globe, but cheap, invisible and

    • The US for blowing up the NordStream pipelines.

      Putting blame aside: How would blowing up a gas pipeline that has been shut down release much methane?

  • by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 ) on Wednesday March 06, 2024 @08:03PM (#64296110)
    The Tropomi instrument onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite produces a global map of methane concentrations every day (with a 5 day delay for methane which apparently requires additional processing). https://www.esa.int/Applicatio... [esa.int]

    The methane maps from this existing satellite can be found here: https://earth.sron.nl/thema/me... [earth.sron.nl]
    • I've not looked at the processing chain but I suspect that getting an accurate measure on the methane concentration requires correcting for a lot of atmospheric state parameters. So the processing probably has to wait for inputs from a lot of meteorological data sources, both on the ground and in orbit.

  • Let's see... hmm...could it be:
    Gazprom
    PetroChina
    Sinopec
    ExxonMobil
    BP
    Chevron
    Royal Dutch Shell
    Total
    Rosneft
    Lukoil

  • That only goes so far. What they should have done is equipped it with a laser weapon that can light the methane on fire.

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