DOE Completes $162 Million Loan Guarantee for Methane Leak Monitoring

The Energy Department on Wednesday gave a big boost to a company working to track methane emissions in some of the most productive oil and gas regions in the United States.

DOE's Loan Programs Office announced the closing of a $162.4 million loan guarantee for LongPath Technologies. The funds will help the Colorado-based company build more than 1,000 remote monitoring towers to continuously scan for emissions of the greenhouse gas.

In a statement, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said preventing “harmful greenhouse gas emissions” from entering the atmosphere is an “important pillar” of the Biden administration’s agenda. The DOE said the project will be funded through the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing Program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

The LPO loan guarantee will support monitoring of up to 24,000 square miles, DOE said in a news release, and includes locations in top-producing states such as Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. According to the Department of Energy, LongPath's planned monitoring network could prevent methane emissions equal to at least 6 million tons of carbon dioxide per year from entering the atmosphere.