It doesn't look like they can detect any underwater seeps.
https://watson.brown.edu/files/watson/imce/news/ResearchMatters/2019/Methane%20Report-6%20November%202019.pdf
Water absorbs IR (looks black on IR satellite images), but most of the visible spectrum seems to reflect off the water just fine. So they must be using IR sensors to detect the gas. Methane seeps over land, too. But you have to look for it.
I checked out the paper, and it focuses on the oil and gas industry with the assumption that increased activity/production means increased methane emissions. It does, until the infrastructure for fas gathering catches up, Ironically, the great lag in capturing gas as opposed to flaring in North Dakota is on federal and Tribal Land, where extra permits and such are required in order to put in the gathering pipelines. The permitting process is a major delaying factor, and the percentage of gas flared from Federal and Tribal wells is one and a half times that of the rest of wells on private land. (30% vs 20%, respectively) in a time when oil production continues to rise, passing 1.5 MMBOPD (Million barrels {each 'M' representing a multiplier of one thousand} of oil per day) last month. The gas gathering/processing infrastructure is chasing a still moving target.
Almost no mention of natural sources, so the focus is on oilfields and other energy sectors.
To do this, they used models. Hmmmm. I haven't had time to look those over, but will say the following:
Methane is valuable (it's what's commonly referred to as "Natural Gas", and marketable, so the less that drifts off in the wind, the more money is made.
It is, in oil production operations, a byproduct, worth far less than the oil it is dissolved in, but despite the expense involved in gathering that raw wellhead gas for processing, the interest is there to do so, and regulations are already in place in this state to ensure that is encouraged, royalties paid on flared gas after a time limit act as incentive to get that gas to market, rather than burn it and pay for it too.
Especially with pad wells (up to 10 wells on a single production location), the infrastructure demands have become even easier to meet with less far flung gathering systems, often arranged in lines, (look at well pad distribution in southern Mc Kenzie County, ND on google Earth, for instance) so the cost overall of capturing and transporting the wellhead gas (which contains methane) has come down, the infrastructure exists or is being built, not just in North Dakota, but elsewhere as well.
While different aspects of the energy sector are cited for relative methane production, there is no perspective in the article as to how that production relates to natural methane seepage (known to have been used as an exploration tool at one time for oil/gas resources at depth), nor Mehane production in everything from swamps to livestock, and certainly not that emitted by humans. (I can see where a vegan diet might cause an uptick in methane levels, at least locally). The myriad oil seeps evident in the Gulf of Mexico can't be evaluated because of the detection methods.
Pity. I had hoped to see how we stack up to all that Swamp.
My instinct is that it's a hit piece, for when the ecocommies get power again, to be thrown at the industry Obama couldn't shut down.
In the meantime, the issue of flaring gas has been faced and dealt with in local jurisdictions, I know North Dakota has some definite rules regarding this, designed to focus on maximizing the capture of a valuable resource (doubtless, so the State can tax it, but that is beside the point--it is being done).
So, why the hit, why now?
Hillary isn't going to be POTUS, and unless they Dems have some serious dirt on Pence, Nancy isn't either.
But in the effort to crash the economy and have another Depression (when Democrats ran things), part deux, the oil and Gas industry managed to grow, develop, flourish, and frankly, thwart the Communists goals to create complete economic chaos by being a shining beacon of capitalist activity that spun off benefits to seemingly unrelated industries far and wide and thoroughly resisted all the SJW memes and themes in a line of work where you are as good as you are, regardless of where you are from or how much suntan you have.
