The BBC reports that an enormous methane leak was detected in Kazakhstan between June and December last year, with an estimated 127,000 tonnes of gas released to the atmosphere, which would make it the second largest ever detected.

Satellites detected the leaks, with the data being analysed by French geoanalytics firm Kayrros and verified by the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Buzachi Neft, the company responsible for the well from which the methane leaked, has denied a major leak occurred, saying that the well contained only a “negligible” amount of gas, and that the company “approached the situation responsibly”, although Kazakh authorities have fined the company US$774,000 for “violations of environmental legislation”, with the Department of Ecology finding “excessive amounts of methane in the air” between June and December.

The largest ever detected methane leak was that from the explosions of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022, which resulted in 230,000 tonnes of natural gas being released.

Monitoring of methane leaks is likely to become more and more of an issue in the coming years as companies try to meet their leakage reduction goals and third parties attempt to hold them to those goals. Indeed, Google announced on 14 February that it would collaborate with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in the launch of a new satellite in March, supporting it by “creating a global map of oil and gas infrastructure.

The goal is the understanding of which components contribute most to emissions… we’ll use AI to identify oil and gas infrastructure, like oil storage containers, in our imagery. Then, we’ll combine it with EDF’s information about oil and gas infrastructure to locate where the emissions are coming from.”