You are getting a well-deserved correction to your ignorance of political forces that might result from perceived threats to the oil and gas industry. I want t

You are getting a well-deserved correction to your ignorance of political forces that might result from perceived threats to the oil and gas industry. I want to comment on a separate thing, about responsibility for the measurement, that’s in your second paragraph. Developing the spectroscopic measurement of methane from space took a lot of time and engineering skill. (I happened to observe some of this work as part of $dayjob.) In the US, the responsibility for developing novel space measurement technology has historically gone to NASA. It is proven in space (raised to “TRL 9” in the jargon) by NASA, and then transitioned to other sectors, like NOAA or USGS, for operational use. The prioritization and maturation is very well developed at this point. Part of the reason it rests with NASA is that systems for spectroscopic measurement of gases (in this example) are also used for other space missions, e.g. planetary and astrophysics. For instance, some of the team of this methane instrument overlaps with the MISE team that will use spectroscopy for Europa https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/instruments/mise/ https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/instruments/mise/). Besides sharing personnel and knowledge, I believe some of the sensor hardware for MISE and for that in OP was fabricated at the same facility.