Observing methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure in the Permian Basin using TROPOMI - Code & Dataset

This repository contains posterior emission fluxes computed for our study: "Observing methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure in the Permian Basin using TROPOMI" which is submitted to GRL. The Permian Basin is one of the largest methane sources in the United States, yet quantifying emissions at scales needed to attribute them to specific infrastructure remains challenging. Here we present a methane flux inversion from 2018 through 2025 using TROPOMI retrievals and a machine learning surrogate for atmospheric transport (FootNet). We estimate emissions at 1x1 km2 spatial resolution and weekly time resolution over the Permian Basin, jointly solving for background concentrations. We find total Permian Basin emissions of 2.6$\pm$0.5~Tg/yr, a factor of 2.4 higher than the EPA inventory, with strong spatial correspondence to gas wells, pipelines, storage tanks, compressor stations, and processing facilities. Emissions in the Delaware sub-basin exceed those in the Midland, consistent with greater infrastructure density. Despite a 2-3x increase in production, total emissions remained stable, driving a decline in methane intensity from 5% to 2% and yielding no statistically significant seasonal cycle.