Oil and gas producers in major oil fields across the United States may be emitting three times as much planet-warming methane gas as official estimates, according to new research published Wednesday, the latest study to suggest that emissions from the fossil fuel sector may be grossly undercounted.

In some parts of New Mexico, more than 9 percent of the natural gas produced was escaping into the atmosphere, researchers said in the study, published in the journal, Nature.

Methane is the main component of natural gas, and when released unburned into the atmosphere it acts as an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. It can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

The release of methane — often through leaks at well sites or gas processing plants, along pipelines or in other energy facilities — is bad news for global warming, which is already causing higher sea levels, fiercer storms, more intense droughts and a greater loss of biodiversity around the world.

For the study, researchers at Stanford University, Kairos Aerospace and other labs looked at about one million measurements gathered from aerial surveys over six oil- and gas-producing regions. Using those measurements, along with computer modeling, they found that oil and gas operations in those regions released an estimated 6.2 million tons of methane a year.