The Core

"No one expects that pipelines are sometimes wide open, pouring gas into the atmosphere," he says.

Yet they were. Over the course of two years, during 2019 and 2020, the researchers counted more than 1,800 large bursts of methane, often releasing several tons of methane per hour. Lauvaux and his colleagues published their findings this week in the journal Science.

The researchers consulted with gas companies, trying to understand the source of these "ultra-emitting events." They found that some releases resulted from accidents. More often, though, they were deliberate. Gas companies simply vented gas from pipelines or other equipment before carrying out repairs or maintenance operations.

According to the researchers, the large releases of methane that they detected accounted for 8-12% of global methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure during that time.





Satellites have detected massive gas leaks : NPR
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/03/1077392791/a-satellite-finds-massive-methane-leaks-from-gas-pipelines

>  North Sea Gas ... is carefully monitored, and controlled.


That appears to be the case.

"The countries where bursts of methane happened most frequently included the former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, Russia, the United States, Iran, Kazakhstan and Algeria. Lauvaux says they found relatively few such releases in some other countries with big gas industries, such as Saudi Arabia."

...automated technique that uses satellite imagery...

...this technique could be used to establish lagoon construction dates for any area....

Satellite imagery gives researchers timeline of when swine waste lagoons were built
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/943330