Industry alliance promises to rein in flaring
A coalition of oil and gas trade groups says it aims to end routine flaring by 2030 as the Texas Railroad Commission indicates it will crack down on the practice.
The Texas Methane and Flaring Coalition on Wednesday said it will work to end the burning of excess natural gas from oil wells especially when there is a lack of gas gathering and processing systems to take it to market. The group, formed in December 2019 to improve ways to minimize flaring, says it maintains the right to burn excess gas for safety reasons.
“The Texas oil and natural gas industry continues to make tremendous strides toward a cleaner, stronger and better energy future, as evidenced by the Texas Methane and Flaring Coalition’s goal to end routine flaring by 2030,” said Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil and Gas Association, one of the seven trade groups in the coalition that also includes 40 oil and gas companies.
Facing mounting pressure from environmentalists and investors concerned about climate change, Texas regulators and industry leaders are taking a harder stance against flaring.
The Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas operations in the state, in November began requiring operators to provide reasons for flaring, and in recent meetings have deferred requests from oil and gas companies that would exempt them from flaring regulations. Under current regulations, producers are allowed to burn excess natural gas for 10 days after a well is completed.
“Flaring is a necessary last resort during (some accidents and equipment breakdowns), and we have work to do internally at the commission to ensure that we are not approving requests that go beyond that,” Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright said in a statement Tuesday, calling for an investigation into why such flaring exceptions over the past four years have increased.
Flaring has fallen to the lowest level in nearly a decade after lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic slashed crude demand and oil and gas production. Norwegian energy research firm Rys
tad estimates that during the fourth quarter of 2020, operators burned off 390 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, about 1.6 percent of gas production, an eight-year low. During 2018 and 2019, more than 4 percent of the natural gas produced in West Texas’ Permian Basin was flared.
Still, a trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Permian has been flared since 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration. And flaring is expected to rise again when demand recovers from the pandemic.
The oil industry has long been targeted for the practice that releases greenhouse gases such as methane, which is 84 times more capable of trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Flaring is also a waste of natural resources that could yield $440 million of additional revenue by 2025 if 98 percent of natural gas from Texas wells was captured, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
About 5 percent of Permian gas outlets in Texas and New Mexico, however, were unlit and an additional 5 percent were malfunctioning or partially lit, releasing large amounts of natural gas into the atmosphere in 2020, the Environmental Defense Fund said Wednesday.
“This year of data makes it painfully clear that flaring performance has remained abysmal through the industry’s highs and lows,” said Colin Leyden, the fund’s director of regulatory and legislative affairs for Texas. “The science is clear that flaring cannot be an afterthought. Left unchecked, the practice is compounding industry’s methane problem at a time when investors and overseas markets are calling for cleaner production.”