Your Guide to Maximizing LDAR Efficiency with Aerial Methane Monitoring

How Operators Are Increasing Efficiency with Smarter Emissions Management

In the effort to cut emissions and improve operational efficiency, oil and gas operators face a crucial challenge: how to detect and fix leaks faster, without wasting time or resources. At Bridger Photonics, we’re helping operators do just that. Our advanced aerial Gas Mapping LiDAR® (GML) technology delivers actionable data so you can prioritize the biggest leaks, skip unnecessary site visits, and ultimately keep gas in the pipes.

Whether you’re operating upstream or midstream assets, here's a step-by-step guide for how our clients are streamlining their strategies and reducing wasted gas.

Step 1: Know Exactly Where Your Leaks Are (And Where They’re Not)

No more wasting time responding to leaks that are actually on a neighboring operator’s facility. As a client of Bridger Photonics, you can be confident that you know exactly where your emissions are, and just as importantly, where they are not.

Our LiDAR scans provide high-resolution plume imagery with pinpoint leak locations down to approximately two meters (about six feet), and equipment ID overlays, so you can go directly to the source of the leak. This eliminates the guesswork, and reduces windshield time for your crews, meaning fewer wasted hours, safer deployments, and reduced operating costs.

This method has not only proven extremely efficient in directing our voluntary LDAR program but is also reducing employee work and driving hours. The time saved allows our employees to spend less time finding leaks and more time preventing leaks.

- Pioneer Natural Resources (now ExxonMobil)

We also protect you from false super-emitter claims. By pinpointing emissions (and accurately quantifying—read on for more about that) even in complex environments, we ensure that your data is reliable and defensible, with no risk of aggregated plumes causing confusion or misattribution. This context is especially valuable for midstream operators, where dispersed assets and large infrastructure footprints make traditional leak detection difficult.

Step 2: Quantify to Prioritize (Fix What Matters Most)

Quantification refers to the process of calculating the emission rates of methane leaks. Instead of just identifying the presence of a leak, quantification determines specifically how large the leak is. This is the key to data-driven decision making and driving impactful results. With Bridger’s industry-leading quantification capabilities, you can prioritize the highest-impact leaks first. 

It’s made a huge difference, in fact, it’s changed the way we work. GML has made it so that we can efficiently find emissions and eliminate them by repairing them as quickly as possible, but also strategize where we need to upgrade our system effectively.

- Diversified Energy

Bridger’s quantification accuracy is backed by peer-reviewed research and proven in extensive controlled release studies. And with virtually no false positives, there is no wild goose chase for emissions that don’t actually exist. Our aircraft-based LiDAR achieves consistent results regardless of environmental conditions, offering an aggregate measurement uncertainty of just +8.2%, the best in its class.

Step 3: Differentiate Fugitive vs. Process Emissions

Beyond leak location and size prioritization, knowing which emissions are process emissions versus fugitive leaks aids operators in determining which leaks to address first. Bridger provides yet another layer of operational insight by distinguishing persistent versus intermittent emissions for the upstream sector. We do this by scanning each facility more than one time (our team calls these “reflights”), and this information is included in your full data reports. 

Bridger’s Gas Mapping LiDAR™ scans our infrastructure from the air — using a laser attached to a small aircraft — helping to pinpoint leaking equipment and quantify the emissions rate. Using the data collected, we can address methane emissions more efficiently and comprehensively. 

- Crescent Energy

Determining whether a leak is persistent or intermittent helps operators understand the likely source—whether it’s a fugitive leak or a process emission. Combined with contextual data like high-resolution aerial photography, and date- and time-stamped emissions data, operators have exactly the information they need to prioritize leak repair and maximize crew efficiency.

Step 4: Scale Your Insights to Predict and Prevent Future Emissions

Once leaks are identified, quantified, and prioritized, the real power lies in scaling that insight across your operations. Bridger’s high-quality data allows you to move from reactive fixes to a more proactive approach of systematically reducing emissions and improving performance over time, as your emissions management program matures.

With consistent, accurate quantification, and insight into emission sources, operators can:

• Support Emissions Inventories - Quantification provides data for baselining and tracking emissions reductions, ensuring regulatory and reporting compliance, including OGMP 2.0.
• Calculate and Benchmark Methane Intensity - Use total emissions data to monitor methane intensity (the emissions output relative to the amount of natural gas produced) across assets and over time.
• Trends Across Equipment Types and Facilities - Identify trends by equipment type, facility, or region to pinpoint where future issues are most likely to occur, and address them before they escalate.
• Build Trust via Transparent Reporting - Emission rate quantification and inventories demonstrate accountability to regulators, investors, and the public.

With Bridger’s aerial LiDAR and analytics, you’re not just fixing leaks, you’re building a smarter, leaner, and more predictive emissions mitigation strategy that keeps gas in the pipes now and into the future.

The Bottom Line: Fix Smarter, Save More Gas

Fixing leaks is safer, more efficient, and more effective than ever with aerial Gas Mapping LiDAR. Bridger provides unmatched data quality, including quantified leak rates, precise georeferenced aerial imagery and plume imagery, and intermittency designations so you can act faster and work smarter.

Cut your emissions and keep gas in the pipes. Because operational efficiency isn’t just about fixing leaks haphazardly, it’s about knowing which ones to fix, when, and how, then scaling that entire system to future-proof your operations.

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