Views From Above: Methane-detecting Satellite Mission

[Editor's note: A version of this story appears in the March 2020 edition of Oil and Gas Investor. Subscribe to the magazine here.]

If all goes as planned, a satellite weighing just more than 770 pounds will be launched into space and orbit the Earth once every 90 minutes, assessing what lies beneath.

Its mission: detect methane emissions, main­ly from oil and gas sites across the world, from about 500 kilometers above the earth.

The satellite is the centerpiece of an $88 mil­lion donor-funded effort led by the Environmen­tal Defense Fund (EDF), a New York-headquar­tered nonprofit environmental advocacy group. MethaneSAT, an affiliate of EDF, said the sat­ellite will pinpoint methane-emitting sites and the magnitude of such emissions using a wide, 200-kilometer view path.

Hopes are that it will be able to measure emissions from about 80% of the world’s ma­jor global oil and gas facilities about every four days.

The goals are lofty: launch the satellite by first-half 2022 to support EDF’s efforts to cut methane pollution from oil and gas sites 45% by 2025. Working with oil and gas companies to find solutions also remains on the agenda.

“Methane is a growing challenge for the in­dustry, and it’s a challenge for operators of all sizes and at every step of the supply chain,” EDF president Fred Krupp told Hart Energy. “Transparency is key, and new technologies are making these invisible problems visible to investors, employees and regulators.”

The efforts come as the world turns more to­ward natural gas to displace coal, which emits more CO₂. Emissions from combustion of gas are also lower than oil. However, methane—a potent greenhouse gas—is the main compo­nent of natural gas.

Oil and gas companies have worked to bring down methane emissions from operations us­ing a variety of techniques. These have includ­ed optical gas-imaging cameras, which use in­frared technology to detect methane, and green well completions—a process that separates gas and liquids from the flowback, enabling the gas to be treated and used or sold—to mini­mize venting of volatile organic compounds and methane.

Some companies have also joined voluntary initiatives, such as the Oil and Gas Climate Ini­tiative and Our Nation’s Energy Future Coali­tion, aimed at curbing methane emissions.

However, emissions remain high despite in­dustry-led initiatives, according to the Interna­tional Energy Agency (IEA).

Methane emissions from the oil and gas sector reached nearly 80 million tonnes in 2018, according to the IEA’s January 2020 Methane Tracker.

“These emissions came from a wide variety of sources along the oil and gas value chains, from conventional and unconventional produc­tion, from the collection and processing of gas, as well as from its transmission and distribution to end-use consumers,” the IEA said. “Some emissions are accidental, for example because of a faulty seal or leaking valve, while others are deliberate, often carried out for safety reasons or due to the design of the facility or equipment.”

Views from above

EDF’s MethaneSAT will be equipped with a pair of sensors, according to Tom Inger­soll, MethaneSAT project director and for­mer CEO of Skybox Imaging. The two in­frared-imaging spectrometers, an instrument that measures wavelengths of light where it is absorbed by methane, will be focused on both oxygen and methane.

“You use oxygen as a proxy for the mass and the constituency in the air column that you’re looking at,” Ingersoll explained.

Pinpointing emission sources will also re­quire inversion analysis—used to distinguish human-made emissions from ambient sourc­es—and algorithms that account for the impact of wind on methane plume sizes and locations among other factors.

“We’ve got to be able to almost march that plume back in time to say, ‘OK, in order to cre­ate a plume of this magnitude, where are the point sources located and at what magnitude leaks would [these] have occurred to be able to create a plume of this size?’”

While the satellite will detect methane con­centration over a certain area, the team aims to convert that data into leak rates, which In­gersoll said will be in kilograms per hour of methane being emitted at certain sites.

“That’s an important part of the overall sys­tem that we’re trying to develop. The satellite is a key piece of it, but it’s not all of it,” he said. “There’s a lot of horsepower and analysis that’s going to be required to convert the con­centrations to leak rates.”

Data and analysis will be available to the public.

“MethaneSAT is designed to both identify and solve a global environmental problem. By providing global emissions data on a regular basis, the mission [aims to] help both com­panies and officials identify and reduce emis­sions,” EDF said. “It will vastly expand the public’s knowledge and understanding of both [the] problem and the opportunities to solve it.”

Prior to the satellite’s launch, in a project called MethaneAIR, scientists have installed an instrument like the one that will go into space aboard a Gulfstream jet. They are fly­ing over areas with known methane emissions, collecting data to help refine algorithms that will be used by the satellite.

Key to the obtaining data from space will be successful ground communications linked to the orbiting satellite.

Ingersoll said plans are to use an existing ground network of sensors, the Total Carbon Column Observing Network used by NASA and others, to calibrate and validate satel­lite-based sensor data. The validation strategy will rely on those ground-based sensors.

“You really have to have it [the scientific instrument] highly calibrated and validated so that you can believe the result,” Ingersoll said.

MethaneSAT said it anticipates the satel­lite will be able to quantify methane emission rates for a major oil and gas field with an ex­pected 25% to 35% error. “In other words, the emission rate will be no more than 17.5% above or below the measurement from Meth­aneSAT on average. By taking repeat mea­surements over time, uncertainty will drop and the ability to effectively detect changes in emission rates will increase,” he said.

“Our objective is to understand emissions from the oil and gas sector, and so we are put­ting together a list of where that infrastruc­ture is located globally,” Ingersoll continued. “We’ll be imaging those regions.

MethaneSAT will be able to angle the sat­ellite in either direction by 20 degrees or so. However, it will not be capable of imaging through clouds or at night.

Marking milestones

MethaneSAT was announced in April 2018 during TED2018 as part of The Audacious Project: Collaborative Philanthropy for Bold Ideas. Since then, its efforts have come a long way. In the past 12 months, the team has re­fined requirements around the science and the satellite’s sensors, so its design yields the greatest accuracy and picks up desired sig­nals, as part of the now completed systems requirements review process, Ingersoll said.

Ball Aerospace was selected to serve as the methane-detection payload provider, while Blue Canyon Technologies was tapped to supply the platform for the satellite.

In January, preliminary design review began, a process during which project requirements and design concepts go through rigorous anal­ysis. The intent is to make sure the systems can accomplish the objective, Ingersoll said, add­ing long lead parts are ordered.

By year-end, the team anticipates having a rocket on contract to launch the satellite and be­ing months into the critical design review pro­cess, preparing to start assembling the satellite.

“MethaneAIR will have been flying, and we will be able to use that data to begin to baseline our algorithms for data processing,” Ingersoll said. The team wants to mature the algorithms as much as possible before the satellite launches.

Providing oversight will be two groups—one technical, one scientific—comprised of big names in the space industry. They include Dan McCleese, an atmospheric scientist, founder of Synoptic Science and former chief scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lab is known for its expertise in trace gas detection. Top technical talent also includes Joe Rothen­berg, former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and director of engineer­ing and operations for Google’s Terra Bella.

The groups will be involved in second-tier development, particularly around converting data gathered from MethaneAIR, and assess­ing algorithms.

“We aren’t cutting any corners on the sci­ence of the satellite,” Ingersoll said.

Big picture

Pinpointing sites of methane emissions and accurately determining how much methane is being released into the atmosphere is just one part of the solution.

Next steps involve working with oil and gas sites to address problematic areas.

“We are currently working with many oil and gas companies, and we definitely do plan to continue to do that work after the data is gener­ated,” EDF’s Krupp said.

Past efforts have included teaming with Exx­on Mobil Corp. and Stanford University to test methane detection devices and creating a virtual reality program that allows a user to enter an oil field, spot methane leaks and learn how to fix them, he said.

“The good news is that not only are there technologies emerging that allow companies to see the problem, but also there are technologies, including the same technologies, that provide the means for companies to solve the problem,” Krupp said. “We are working with companies to bring their attention to those new technologies and also working with companies to roll out those technologies.”