Tracking Ethane From Space Over a Large US Oil and Gas Region Geophysical Research Letters

Ethane (C2H6) is a volatile organic compound (VOC) that has few anthropogenic sources, and is primarily emitted from oil and natural gas (NG) (O&G) activities. This makes it a useful tracer for distinguishing O&G activities from other sources of methane (CH4) and non‐methane VOCs. Here we use the Cross‐track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) to develop a simple physical approach that quantifies the change in C2H6 absorption over the Permian basin. However, aircraft observations and the magnitude of the gradient in absorption across the basin suggests our model underestimates C2H6 emissions by a factor of ∼2. The 2014–2020 trend in C2H6 absorption is found to be increasing 5.6% ± 3.8% yr−1, which suggests that the amount of VOCs emitted per amount of NG production has decreased by 23% yr−1.