Earlier this year, a satellite commissioned by the United Nations flew over West Texas searching for so-called super emitters, oil and gas sites with outsized emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane.

On Jan. 20 it identified a plume of methane 20 miles south of Midland that was growing at a rate of eight tons per hour, uploading the images along with the coordinates of the plume to a United Nations website for public view. The satellite, which has been surveying the world’s oil and gas fields since 2022, identified 17 separate sites in West Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin that were emitting methane at a rate of more than one ton per hour over the course of a day – 10 times the level the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defines as a super emitter.