Turkmenistan is home to over two-thirds of the 25 largest methane emissions sites identified worldwide so far in 2025, according to an academic monitoring initiative.Researchers at UCLA’s Stop Methane Project mapped over 3,100 methane plumes at oil & natural gas extraction “sites in dozens of countries of all income levels and in all world regions.” They based the findings on data provided by Carbon Mapper, a non-profit working to fully chart “greenhouse gas emissions to empower mitigation action.” Of the top 25 sites in terms of hourly emission rates, 17 are found in Turkmenistan, according to the UCLA list.
The top two emitters are in the Esenguly District of Turkmenistan’s Balkan Province on the Caspian Sea, pumping out 10 million tons and 9.6 million tons respectively of methane per hour.
Three other sites in Esenguly also made the top 10.Other high-pollution sites were confirmed in Balkanabat, also in Balkan Province.Other countries with more than one site in the top 25 were Venezuela and Iran.
Methane emissions are considered a major factor driving global warming.The UCLA researchers said they excluded some major methane emission sites from their list because they were observed only once by satellites, due to their orbit routes. “To be careful, we only included sources that were observed at least twice,” according to an explanatory note posted on Substack. “So, there are a few oil and gas sector sources with extremely high emissions rates that appear on Carbon Mapper’s portal, but that we excluded from this list because they were observed only once.”