OGMP 2.0 level 5: what satellite data can and can't prove
Level 5 is the hard tier. It asks operators to reconcile measured, source-level emissions data against their own inventory estimates, and to show the gap, not just report a number that sounds plausible. That reconciliation requirement is where a lot of MRV teams start asking what satellite data actually gets them, versus what still needs a crew, a drone, or a continuous monitoring system on site.
What satellite plume data can give you
Imaging spectrometry over the SWIR band picks up the absorption signature of a methane plume and, when the resolution is tight enough, ties that plume back to a specific site boundary rather than a basin-wide estimate. For Level 5 work that means a named pad or facility with a plume over it on a given overpass: OGMP level 5 satellite evidence that points at one location instead of a regional advisory covering an entire county.
For reconciliation purposes, that gives you independent, third-party confirmation that a release happened at a site, on a date, at a scale large enough to register. If your inventory says a site shouldn't be emitting and a plume shows up there anyway, that discrepancy goes straight into the reconciliation report with a timestamp attached.
Revisit cadence matters here too. A single annual flyover catches whatever happened to be venting that day and misses everything else. Daily tasking, where the orbit and scheduling allow it, gets you closer to a pattern. You start to see whether a site emits once and stops, or whether it shows up on repeat passes over weeks, which changes the reconciliation narrative considerably compared with a one-off detection.
What it can't give you
Level 5 reconciliation ultimately wants source-level data, meaning emissions attributed to a specific piece of equipment: a separator, a tank hatch, a compressor seal. Satellite imagery resolves plumes at the site level. It can tell you a facility is emitting; it generally can't tell you which component on that facility is the source. That last step still needs a site visit, an OGI camera, or continuous point sensors tied to specific equipment.
There's also the detection floor. Satellite instruments are built to catch large releases, the super-emitter category. Smaller, chronic fugitive emissions, the kind that add up across hundreds of components, mostly sit below what imaging spectrometry can resolve from orbit. If your inventory gap is coming from distributed small leaks rather than one dramatic release, satellite passes won't be the evidence that closes that gap.
Tasking dependency cuts the other way too. Cloud cover, sun angle, and competing tasking priorities mean "daily" is a ceiling, not a guarantee. A reconciliation record built only on satellite passes will have gaps in the time series, and OGMP guidance expects you to document that rather than paper over it.
Where that leaves source-level reconciliation
The honest framing: satellite plume data is strong evidence of occurrence and location, weak evidence of root cause. It tells an MRV analyst where to send the follow-up crew. It doesn't tell them what to write in the final component-level attribution. Teams working toward Level 5 tend to use it as the first filter, the thing that flags a site for closer measurement, rather than as the sole input into the reconciliation table.
That's a narrower claim than a lot of methane-monitoring marketing makes, and it's the one that holds up when an auditor asks how you attributed a number to a source. Building that reconciliation workflow starts with a site-level layer: a plume map that attributes detections to a specific site boundary gives you the flagged location before the component-level follow-up begins. Worth a look if your current evidence stops at "somewhere in the field."