Cutting their satellite programs would be a loss for the whole world: some years ago we[1] used it to find gas flares in Nigeria and estimate their environmental damage and the amount of energy wasted by flaring it instead of power generation for the population of the Niger Delta:
While processing their raw data I got a small discrepancy and they very kindly replied my questions with the exact formulas and constants they used: the cause was that they used the density of methane at 20°C instead of 25°C as I had done.
Getting that kind of data from similar agencies in other countries, even Western European ones, is immensely more difficult even when it exists.
http://gasflaretracker.ng/
[1] I built the application working as freelancer for http://www.stakeholderdemocracy.org/
While processing their raw data I got a small discrepancy and they very kindly replied my questions with the exact formulas and constants they used: the cause was that they used the density of methane at 20°C instead of 25°C as I had done.
Getting that kind of data from similar agencies in other countries, even Western European ones, is immensely more difficult even when it exists.