I agree that once directionally-drilled wells are completed and start producing, they have a short life where they are producing a serious profit. The issue is that companies will get permits that don’t expire for drilling a bunch of wells, then they drill some (but not all), and often won’t complete all the wells immediately, as they wait for the market prices of oil and gas to be in their favor. This can drag on for a decade or more.

Once these wells aren’t as profitable, they still produce oil and gas for a long time, and there are emissions associated with that.

Also, while emissions do correlate with production overall, emissions are a much higher proportion of production as wells go beyond their peak, and they often get sold to companies that don’t do as good of a job maintaining them, which leads to more emissions, etc.