U.S. oil and gas methane held at 9.3 to 10.4 teragrams a year as production rose

Methane released by U.S. oil and gas operations stayed between 9.3 and 10.4 teragrams a year from 2019 to 2024, even as production climbed, according to a satellite-based study published October 13, 2026 in Communications Earth & Environment. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, led by first author Ao Chen and senior researcher Scot Miller, found a dip of 0.58 teragrams between 2019 and 2023 followed by a slight rise in 2024. The measure that moved most was emissions per unit of output, which fell by about 11 percent.

Reading the satellites

The team did not rely on company reports. It combined methane measurements from Europe’s TROPOMI instrument and the GOSAT satellite with an atmospheric model and an algorithm that traces gas in the air back to sources on the ground. In the published paper, the authors ran eight scenarios per year and report both the average and the range, and they used independent surface measurements from NOAA to check the results, according to the article itself. The model estimates emissions daily on a grid of 0.5 degrees of latitude by 0.625 degrees of longitude. Inventories supply the starting guesses about where emissions come from, including the EDGAR database and the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and the satellite observations then pull those guesses toward what the atmosphere shows. The authors also compared their numbers with state inventories from California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, which is how they could say something about individual states rather than only the national total.

The totals in question cover oil and gas methane for the contiguous United States, and the research release gives the annual range as 9.3 to 10.4 teragrams. The paper‘s abstract puts the decline from 2019 to 2023 at 0.58 teragrams, with a range of 0.30 to 0.96, and a rise of 0.21 teragrams between 2023 and 2024 that is statistically hard to separate from zero, since its range runs from a slight decrease to 0.53.

Flat emissions, rising output

Production increased over the period, so the same total spread over more oil and gas means less methane per unit. Emissions intensity fell 11.1 percent from 2019 to 2024, with a range of 9.3 to 13.6 percent across scenarios, and the researchers describe that as a continuation of a decades-long trend rather than a sharp break. A Phys.org report framed the result as emissions flatlining despite increases in production.

Texas, described as the largest oil-producing region, saw oil and gas methane emissions fall 14 percent, from 3.50 teragrams to 3.02. The explanations offered are mostly commercial and operational. Companies built more infrastructure to capture methane and bring it to market, which gives them a financial reason to limit leaks, and pipeline access in regions such as West Texas reduced flaring, since gas that can be sold is less likely to be burned off. Miller said better industry protocols and less flaring have likely helped gradually curb emissions intensity.

No visible policy effect

The study set out to ask whether federal climate legislation and mandates made a measurable difference. The EPA restarted methane rulemaking under the Clean Air Act in 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 set fees on methane from oil and gas facilities and provided more than $1 billion in technical support to the sector. The paper’s own wording says the intensity decline came with little indication of federal policy impact, and Mirage News’s account of the Johns Hopkins findings quotes Chen saying the team sees no detectable decrease in emissions after the Inflation Reduction Act.

Chen added a caveat: the counterfactual cannot be tested, so emissions could have been higher without the law. He also said that without long-term regulatory durability, the industry may lack the incentive to cut further, and that total methane emissions need to fall for the effect on the climate to be real.

Miller was blunt about the remaining scale. “The bad news is that oil and gas production is still a large percentage of U.S. methane emissions,” he said. Methane is nearly 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide and has a shorter lifespan, which is why it is widely regarded as the second most important greenhouse gas to target.

State goals and open questions

The satellite record also bears on state ambitions. According to the Johns Hopkins summary, California and Colorado are likely falling short of their own methane reduction goals, a conclusion drawn by comparing the satellite-based estimates with state inventories that also include New Mexico and Texas.

The funding behind the work is not stated in the Mirage News account, and the National Science Foundation’s funder portal on EurekAlert lists releases connected to that agency. The central open question is the one Chen named: whether the next few years bring a drop in the total, not just in intensity. The 2024 uptick, small and uncertain as it is, shows the total can move in the wrong direction.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview