Giant US gas plume illustrates the cost of leaking methane

Cuba, New Mexico

THE methane that leaks from 40,000 gas wells near this desert trading post may be colourless and odourless, but it's not invisible. It can be seen from space.

Satellites that sweep over energy- rich northern New Mexico can spot the gas as it escapes from drilling rigs, compressors and kilometres of pipeline snaking across the badlands. In the air, it forms a giant plume: a permanent, methane cloud the size of the US state of Delaware and is so vast that scientists questioned their own data when they first studied it three years ago.

"We couldn't be sure that the signal was real," said Nasa researcher Christian Frankenberg.

The country's biggest methane "hot spot", verified by Nasa and University of Michigan scientists in October, is only the most dramatic example of what scientists describe as a US$2 billion leak problem: the loss of …