Comment on egusphere-2025-6126

Abstract. Mitigating global anthropogenic methane emissions is widely recognized as an effective strategy to reduce near-term climate warming. Here, we use satellite observations from MethaneSAT (2024–2025) to characterize methane emissions from major oil and gas basins worldwide. MethaneSAT addresses a critical gap in access to quantitative measurements of spatially distributed area emissions, providing high-resolution (~4 km × 4 km), wide-swath (220–440 km) coverage. We analyze aggregated MethaneSAT emissions across six major oil and gas producing regions: the Permian (USA), San Joaquin (USA), Eagle Ford (USA/Mexico), Amu Darya (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), and the Zagros Foldbelt (Iran/Iraq). Regional oil and gas emissions span more than an order of magnitude, ranging from 408 t h⁻¹ (95% CI: 303–516 t h⁻¹) for the Permian basin to 30 t h⁻¹ (95% CI: 20.3–41.1 t h⁻¹) in the San Joaquin basin. Methane intensities also vary substantially across basins and sub-basins, with more than an order of magnitude variation in both production-normalized and energy-normalized metrics. These differences reflect diverse factors, including contrasts in oil versus gas production, infrastructure age, contributions of lower-producing wells, and presence or absence of emission mitigation practices. Across jurisdictions, including counties and districts, we find consistent underestimation by gridded EPA-GHGI and EDGAR bottom-up inventories relative to MethaneSAT-derived emissions. Overall, MethaneSAT data provide basin-wide and sub-regional insights into methane emissions and intensities, offering critical scientific and policy-relevant information to support targeted and effective methane mitigation strategies.