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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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In the US, the biggest oil and gas industry sources have a significant emissions tax ($900/tonne, rising to $1500 in 2026) attached to them. So they can do a bit more than wag for the worst cases.
It'll take shifting that down to include smaller sources though, and enforcing that kind of penalty worldwide.
Unfortunately these satellites don't have a high-enough resolution for oil and gas source attribution in most cases. They're great for CAFOs and landfills, though.
My understanding is that the plan is to use a mix of high-frequency-low-resolution imaging with less-frequent-higher-resolution images to pinpoint specific leak sources.
That's true, but because oil and gas emissions are stochastic in nature, it's expensive and difficult to get enough measurements from airplanes and drones to really fill in the gaps. There are also only so many planes available that can do this kind of measurement. MethaneAir is one. The state of Colorado has funded these kinds of flights, but only for a few weeks per year and only for a small subset of the oil and gas industry in the state.
These flights also have to be planned long in advance and it's difficult to react to emissions seen from satellites. This part will hopefully improve as time goes on.