Turkmenistan has begun sealing the methane mega-leaks pouring from its ageing oil and gas facilities, stopping eight of them, the Guardian reported on August 31, citing the latest UN data.

The repairs covered corroded pipes, faulty wells and failing flares. The UN called the work an incredible first step while saying much remained to be done.

For a country that has spent years treating leaked gas as an accounting rounding error, the shift in attitude is dramatic. Turkmenistan sits on some of the world's largest gas reserves and is a major supplier to China, and leaks were previously ignored precisely because of the volumes on tap. Methane traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide and causes 25% of current global heating, but it breaks down far faster, which is why stopping leaks has a rapid effect and why some experts call it the climate emergency brake.

The scale of the problem is still enormous. The UN Methane Alert and Response System, known as Mars, sent Turkmenistan 192 alerts of methane plumes over the past year. The country had three of the six worst leaks detected anywhere in the world over the past six months, and nine of the worst 50. It responded to about 20% of alerts with information from the ground and possible plans to fix them.

"These mitigation cases are a proof point of what can be done with satellite data, especially in situations like Turkmenistan, where there are a lot of detections," said Meghan Demeter, programme manager of Mars, which sits within the UN Environment Programme. "We're seeing that the pipeline of satellite data to mitigation action works, and it can work quite quickly."

"This is a breakthrough in terms of having real documented mitigation action," she told the Guardian. "But it is not yet a breakthrough in the overall magnitude of emissions. Eight cases is an incredible first step, but there's also a lot more sources in Turkmenistan that need to be addressed."

The comparison that stands out is with the United States, which received the second-highest number of alerts at 138, responded to none of them and fixed no leaks over the year. Iran, Russia and China also responded to nothing. The previous US administration did engage with Mars, and one small leak in New Mexico was fixed in 2024 after a pressure safety valve was repaired, but that engagement ended with the second Trump presidency. Last year Trump called climate change "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world" at the UN General Assembly.

The single worst leak found anywhere was in Mexico's offshore oil and gas industry, at 37 tonnes of methane an hour, equivalent to the emissions of more than 7mn sport utility vehicles. Mexico responded to all 23 of its alerts over the year but had not completed a fix.

Turkmenistan's turn began with exposure. The Guardian revealed in March 2023 that the country had the most super-emitting leaks in the world, and reported in May that year that methane from its two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the United Kingdom. Sources in Ashgabat said the scrutiny was the critical step that led the government to engage with the UN, the EU and other institutions. Turkmenistan joined the global methane pledge in December 2023, two years after it launched. The first leak was fixed in November 2024, after a faulty well was repaired, and the most recent in March, on a corroded pipeline.

The foreign ministry and the state companies Turkmenoil and Turkmengaz did not respond to a request for comment.

Kazakhstan, the other former Soviet republic with heavily aged oil and gas infrastructure, has also stopped eight leaks, from a smaller base of 38 alerts over the year.

Mars alerts have now led to 43 leaks being sealed worldwide. Some were plugged on the spot; others needed planning and money. One major leak in Algeria had been running for close to 40 years because of a faulty flare.

"Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan are home to some of the world's most significant methane hotspots and their response to satellite alerts is much-needed good news in the global effort to minimise methane pollution," said Dan Grossman, a vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Stemming methane emissions from oil and gas operations is the quickest and most cost-effective method to reduce climate pollution available today. Alerts only matter if they lead to action, and governments and industry must do a better job."

Mexico, Brazil and Argentina answer 100% of alerts, and Libya and Azerbaijan have high response rates. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on every country to respond to 80% of them. Mars uses artificial intelligence to sift data from more than a dozen satellites, with two layers of analyst review, and monitors a site after a reported repair until the data shows emissions have stopped before recording it as a success.