We use satellite methane observations from the
Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), for May 2018 to February 2020,
to quantify methane emissions from individual oil and natural gas (O/G)
basins in the US and Canada using a high-resolution (∼25 km)
atmospheric inverse analysis. Our satellite-derived emission estimates show
good consistency with in situ field measurements (R=0.96) in 14 O/G basins distributed across the US and Canada. Aggregating our results to the
national scale, we obtain O/G-related methane emission estimates of
12.6±2.1 Tg a−1 for the US and 2.2±0.6 Tg a−1 for
Canada, 80 % and 40 %, respectively, higher than the national inventories reported to the United Nations. About 70 % of the discrepancy in the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) inventory can be attributed to five O/G basins, the Permian, Haynesville, Anadarko, Eagle Ford, and Barnett basins, which in total account for 40 % of US emissions. We show more generally that our TROPOMI inversion framework can
quantify methane emissions exceeding 0.2–0.5 Tg a−1 from individual O/G
basins, thus providing an effective tool for monitoring methane emissions
from large O/G basins globally.