Methane Emissions Monitoring in the Delaware Portion of the Permian Basin of New Mexico and Texas

The overall objective of this research project is to maintain and continue to develop the ongoing monitoring of methane emissions from the Delaware portion of the Permian oil and gas production basin in order to estimate total basinal methane emissions on a monthly basis. This will be achieved through a network of five communications tower-based and mountain-top methane concentration measurements encircling the basin, currently in operation. These measurement towers have been in place since March 2020 and are located in Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Hobbs, Notrees, and Fort Stockton.These in-situ instruments continuously measure methane concentrations over the Delaware sub-basin. The project team will continue the operation of this methane concentration measurement network, observe trends in methane (CH4) emissions, and compare the results collected with more publicly accessible numerical modeling tools. The team will transition the monitoring system to High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)/Hysplit and begin reporting basin-wide methane emissions. The emissions will be estimated by combining the methane concentration measurements with a first prediction of emissions based on the locations and type of oil and gas extraction activity in the basin, an analysis of atmospheric transport based on a numerical weather prediction model that assimilates atmospheric observations, and a Bayesian matrix inversion.