  Methane emissions from oil and gas (O&G) production and transmission
represent a significant contribution to climate change. These emissions
comprise sporadic releases of large amounts of methane during maintenance
operations or equipment failures not accounted for in current inventory
estimates. We collected and analyzed hundreds of very large releases from
atmospheric methane images sampled by the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument
(TROPOMI) over 2019 and 2020 to quantify emissions from O&G ultra-emitters.
Ultra-emitters are primarily detected over the largest O&G basins of the world,
following a power-law relationship with noticeable variations across countries
but similar regression slopes. With a total contribution equivalent to 8-12% of
the global O&G production methane emissions, mitigation of ultra-emitters is
largely achievable at low costs and would lead to robust net benefits in
billions of US dollars for the six major producing countries when incorporating
recent estimates of societal costs of methane.
