SACRAMENTO, California — Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday, October 27, highlighted the recent launch of Tanager-2, a second methane-detecting satellite that doubles the reach of California's Satellite Methane Project, known as CalSMP. The governor's office said the state program has already helped stop 50 major methane leaks. The announcement landed on the same day the Trump administration signaled plans to eliminate federal protections that require oil and gas companies to investigate major methane leaks detected through satellites and other monitoring technologies — setting up a direct contrast between Sacramento, which is adding eyes in the sky, and Washington, which is moving to require less reporting and less follow-up.
Source: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom
From 10 leaks to 50 in under a year
Last November, Governor Newsom announced that CalSMP had helped resolve 10 major methane leaks in its first six months using data from the first satellite, Tanager-1. That tally has now grown to 50 large leaks, according to the governor's office: 20 leaks at oil and gas facilities and 30 at landfills. The oil and gas leak repairs alone prevented planet-warming pollution equivalent to taking 42,000 gasoline-powered vehicles off the road for a year. 'California is doubling down on methane-detecting technology to find methane leaks and push polluters to clean them up,' Newsom said in the announcement. 'We're finding methane leaks and getting them fixed. This second satellite means more eyes in the sky to help stop pollution on the ground, protecting California workers, families, and children.'
How the system turns a plume in space into a repair on the ground
Advanced satellite sensors pinpoint large methane plumes, and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) tracks their locations and progress toward stopping them on a public dashboard. Once satellite data is received, the state identifies the facility, alerts the operator, and tracks the response. The governor's office gave a recent example: in late August, satellite data identified a large methane plume linked to oil and gas equipment in the Midway-Sunset oil field, southwest of Bakersfield in Kern County. After CARB was notified, the operator located the source of the leak at a flange on top of a storage tank, and repairs were completed that same day. CARB, through reporting carried by the Los Angeles Times, put that August leak's rate at 918 kilograms of methane an hour before it was fixed. The new Tanager-2 satellite will double the project's coverage, the state said, creating more opportunities to spot major releases and to recheck whether operators have actually fixed them.
The satellite itself: launched October 1 from Vandenberg
Tanager-2 was launched into orbit on October 1, 2026, aboard the SpaceX Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California, according to Carbon Mapper, the Pasadena-based nonprofit that leads the partnership behind the satellites. The Tanager satellites were developed by Planet Labs PBC through that partnership, which is backed by philanthropy, and the methane-detection technology itself was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The governor's office called CalSMP the first major initiative to use the technology in a real-world, non-research setting. The satellites give CARB a much wider view than its previous aircraft monitoring, pass over California four to five times a week, and can recheck a leak's status as needed — which also lets the state estimate how much gas was involved and how long a leak lasted. Additional satellites are expected to launch in 2027 and beyond.
Methane is the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, with a warming impact up to 80 times greater than carbon dioxide, according to the governor's office. It stays in the atmosphere for about a decade, so most of its damage happens quickly — and cutting it delivers climate benefits in the near term, which is why scientists treat methane as the fastest lever available.
Sacramento versus Washington: the federal rollback
The federal changes the administration signaled on Tuesday are expected to include eliminating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 'super-emitter' program, which uses satellite, aircraft and other observations from certified outside groups to identify major methane releases and requires operators to investigate notifications from the EPA. The governor's office said the EPA also plans to revise requirements for low-producing wells — which account for a disproportionate share of the industry's methane emissions — and to reconsider how companies handle natural gas produced at oil wells, including flaring, which burns off gas instead of capturing it. Separately, the EPA last year proposed ending long-standing greenhouse gas reporting requirements for power plants, oil refineries, chemical factories, landfills and many other industries, a proposal that would also let most oil and gas operations stop reporting their greenhouse gas emissions until 2034.
California officials answered in unusually blunt terms. 'The Trump Administration continues to repeal critical protections — this time on methane, a potent climate change-causing super pollutant,' said California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Yana Garcia. 'Removing federal regulations controlling methane leaks from oil and gas rewards polluters at the expense of the public's health and will worsen climate change far beyond our borders.' CARB Chair Lauren Sanchez said: 'Reckless federal rollbacks don't change California law. Our methane regulations remain in place, and we'll keep using every tool we have to cut pollution and protect communities.' When the EPA adopted the prior standards, it projected the full rules would prevent 58 million tons of methane, 16 million tons of smog-forming pollution and 590,000 tons of toxic air pollutants, including benzene, from 2024 through 2038.
What it means for the Central Valley and Punjabi families
Many of the fields and landfills this program watches sit in and around the San Joaquin Valley — Kern County's oil fields near Bakersfield, and landfills and dairy country across Fresno, Tulare and Stanislaus counties — where Punjabi families farm, run businesses and drive the Highway 99 and Interstate 5 trucking corridors. Oil and gas operations release methane alongside other harmful air pollutants, so a leak found and fixed quickly near a town is a public-health event, not only a climate statistic. Because CARB publishes its satellite findings on a public dashboard, residents can see major releases near their communities and how operators responded — a level of local detail that would shrink if detection depended only on the federal system now being rolled back.
What happens next
California's own rules stay in force regardless of the federal process: CARB's Oil and Gas Methane Regulation already requires operators to inspect their systems every quarter and repair above-ground leaks, and its Landfill Methane Regulation requires large landfills to monitor and capture their methane emissions. The federal rollback must still move through the EPA's formal rulemaking steps, where the super-emitter program's future will be contested. In orbit, more Tanager satellites are expected in 2027 and beyond, and through the Subnational Methane Action Coalition, which California launched at COP28, CARB is exploring pilot projects with partner jurisdictions. The number to watch is the state's own count: 50 leaks stopped and rising, now with twice the satellite coverage checking whether each fix holds.