The rate of release could have powered hundreds of thousands of homes, if sustained and captured.
Montreal-based GHGSat operates a fleet of five orbiting satellites. They carry the highest-resolution CH4-detecting sensors in space today.
The company's business is in identifying human-produced CH4 sources and working with those responsible to close off unnecessary releases. Most of its clients are in the fossil fuel industry. "We did reach out to Raspadskaya about their emissions, but so far we've not had a response," Brody Wight, GHGSat's director of landfills and mines, told BBC News.Image source,GHGSat says its observations show emissions from the facility have been trending up over time, with other large events in excess of 50 tonnes per hour and 10 tonnes per hour recorded in late January and and May respectively.
"The analogy would be emissions coming from about five coal-fired power stations in terms of CO2 equivalent. And that's just from the methane that's coming from extracting coal at Raspadskaya. It doesn't include the actual use of this coal which would produce in the neighbourhood of 20-30% additional emissions."
For context, the biggest single-source ultra-emission event ever recorded in the US occurred in October 2015, when methane escaped from an underground natural gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, near Porter Ranch, Los Angeles.
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