Mexico: Scientists who discovered a massive methane leak at an offshore platform operated by Mexico’s Pemex, the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, said that there was “no way” they had made a mistake, completely rejecting the state oil company’s claims that emissions were small and polluting.

Pemex, under international pressure over its environmental record, issued a statement last week calling the study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters flawed, arguing that nitrogen, a colorless, odorless gas, was mistaken for methane in its calculations.

But in a response to media, the scientists behind the study rejected Pemex’s position that the sensors they used to detect methane leaks at the Ku-Malub-Zaap oil field cluster in the Gulf of Mexico could not see the nitrogen.

“There is no way of mistaking one for the other. The startling emissions we reported were 100 percent methane, plain and simple.” said two of the authors, Ms. Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate, Geomatric engineer and Mr. Luis Guanter, remote sensing scientist both at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain.

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is considered a much stronger driver of short-term global warming than carbon dioxide because it traps more heat in the atmosphere. Curbing methane emissions is considered a vital component of global efforts to limit global warming.

The satellite methods behind their study are bringing to light emissions that would have otherwise gone unreported, Ms. Irakulis-Loitxate and Mr. Guanter shared.

“Methane is a huge challenge across the industry. Ideally, operators would embrace this new information,” the two researchers stated.

Mexican President Mr. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is under pressure to clean up the operations of Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) formally known as the world’s most indebted oil company.

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