BAKU, Azerbaijan, June 26. Turkmenistan has opportunities to expand cooperation on methane monitoring and emissions reduction, GHGSat CEO Stephane Germain told Trend.
"Across our global partnerships, from North America to the Middle East to Central Asia, we've found that the most impactful methane reduction programs combine three things: frequent monitoring, rapid data delivery, and deliberate systems to translate data into field action," Germain said.
According to him, that combination turns emissions visibility into emissions reduction.
"For Turkmenistan, I see a clear and exciting opportunity to deepen exactly that kind of integrated approach. The country's energy producers—Turkmengaz in particular—have already demonstrated willingness to use digital and space technologies to drive results," he noted.
Germain said the next step is establishing facility-level monitoring programs that allow operators to respond to leaks faster.
"The logical next step is institutionalizing the kind of facility-level, site-specific monitoring programs that allow operators to detect a leak and dispatch a repair crew within hours rather than weeks," he said.
He added that GHGSat's satellite constellation can now revisit specific sites daily.
"With GHGSat's constellation now capable of daily revisits to specific sites, we can provide Turkmenistan's energy sector with the granularity and speed it needs—not just to report progress to international bodies, but to find and fix the leaks that cost the country real revenue every day.
Methane that escapes into the atmosphere is methane that could have been monetized. That economic argument resonates strongly with energy producers everywhere, and I believe it resonates in Ashgabat too," Germain said.
For reference, GHGSat is a Canadian emissions-monitoring company founded in 2011 and headquartered in Montreal. The company operates one of the world's largest commercial satellite constellations dedicated to greenhouse gas monitoring. GHGSat's satellites monitor methane emissions in more than 85 countries and can detect emissions from individual industrial facilities, including oil and gas sites, coal mines and landfills.
The company provides emissions data to governments, regulators, international organizations and major energy companies, while its technology has been used in collaborations with organizations such as the UN, the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO), ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Total Energies, and Saudi Aramco. GHGSat has expanded its satellite fleet to 14 spacecraft, enabling near-daily monitoring of methane emissions worldwide.
