Energy consultancy Kayrros estimated one leak was spewing out 93 tonnes of methane every hour, meaning the daily emissions from the leakage were equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide pumped out in a year by 15,000 cars in the United States.
Such a revelation would heap pressure on energy companies – already targeted by climate activists and investors for their contribution to carbon dioxide emissions - to find and plug methane leaks. "What this now shows is that the avoidance of that fossil leakage actually can have a larger impact than what was anticipated earlier," said Imperial College London climate scientist Joeri Rogelj, who is one of the authors for reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .
The push to detect emissions from the sky began when U.S. advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund and universities including Harvard used aerial measurements to show methane leaks from America's oil and gas heartland were 60% above inventories reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In an October report, GHGSat estimated the leak released 142,000 tonnes of methane in the 12 months to the end of January 2019 and said then it was the biggest on record.
The Yamal-Europe pipeline stretches 2,000 km from Germany through Poland and Belarus to Russia where it joins the 2,200 km SRTO–Torzhok pipeline to Siberia's gasfields. "Our estimates suggest that Russia is actually among the higher emitters globally. There does appear to be evidence from satellites of leaks along some of its large gas pipeline routes," McGlade said.Graphic: Estimates for Russian methane emissions - https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/rlgpdllmnpo/Estimates%20of%20Russian%20methane%20emissions.pngThe scrutiny from space is set to intensify.
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