Last Updated: October 20, 2025
Background
Earthworks is a nonprofit organization dedicated to working alongside communities to protect people and the environment from the adverse impacts of oil and gas development. We expose the harms of the oil and gas supply chain and gaps in regulation, compliance and enforcement through applied technologies including but not limited to optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras.
OGI cameras are a remote sensing technology that allows for the detection of 20 different hydrocarbon compounds including methane (CH4) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and are deployed by the oil and gas industry, regulators, and an increasing number of NGOs.
Earthworks owns a number of handheld FLIR GF320 OGI cameras that are deployed across the U.S. and internationally. These cameras use an onboard filter that only allows infrared energy of specific wavelengths between 3.2-3.4 micrometers to pass through to the camera’s detector. Hydrocarbon compounds absorb infrared energy at these wavelengths, so these cameras are specifically designed to visualize these compounds.
Only Earthworks’ thermographers who retain OGI Thermography training certification through the Infrared Training Center (ITC) operate our OGI cameras in the field. Our thermographers use OGI cameras to survey a variety of emission sources associated with oil and gas facilities and related activities, petrochemical facilities, and other industrial processes including but not limited to: fracking and drilling equipment, well heads, storage tanks, vents, flares, separators, dehydrators, fittings/unions/connections/valves, compressors, pipelines, and activities such as blowdowns and loading and unloading activities. These surveys provide real-time, on-the-ground evidence on emissions events and allow Earthworks to document critical, source-specific information about the possible cause and duration of these events.
Since 2014, Earthworks has demonstrated success in using OGI evidence to identify both fugitive and intentional oil and gas air pollution from equipment across the supply chain, including malfunctions that require repairs, violations of air quality and methane regulations, and emissions events that are in the public interest.