Orbio Earth finds methane leaks that could cost oil companies billions this year
Summary
The U.S. alone has more than 4 million active and inactive oil and gas wells, any number of which might be leaking as you read this.The key issue why theres so many emissions is because theres no real global scale measurement technology out there that can actually operate on the scale of the oil and gas industry, Robert Huppertz, co-founder and CEO of Orbio Earth, told TechCrunch.And with the EPAs new methane rule, theres finally financial incentive to develop one.The company has been able to observe a significant portion of estimated oil and gas methane emissions in the U.S., the IEA said in a report released Wednesday. Orbio estimates that about 10 million metric tons of methane were released from onshore oil and gas exploration and production in 2023. The startup was a part of the accelerators spring 2023 cohort.There are two basic approaches to measuring methane emissions: bottom-up and top-down. In fact, until just a few years ago, experts thought that more general-purpose remote-sensing satellites like Sentinel-2 wouldnt be able to pull enough signal from the noise to find methane leaks. Thats because methane and water, including cloud cover, can be hard to distinguish.To make the distinction, Orbio watches the entire Earths surface, looking for anomalies over time.