RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

27 October 2026

Output of the greenhouse gas from the Permian Basin has remained near constant over a period during which oil and gas production tripled.

A flare burns off excess methane in the Permian Basin, where yearly methane emissions are more than twice as high as regulators’ estimates. Credit: Justin Hamel/Bloomberg/Getty

Oil and gas production in Texas’s Permian Basin has tripled since 2018. But according to satellite monitoring, the invisible methane emissions leaking from the basin’s fossil-fuel infrastructure didn’t change over the same time 1 .…