Voicing concerns
Too much natural gas is wasted during production on federal and tribal lands, representatives of the federal Bureau of Land Management said Thursday.
Too much natural gas is wasted during production on federal and tribal lands, representatives of the federal Bureau of Land Management said Thursday in Oklahoma City as the agency held a public meeting on proposed methane reduction rules.
The agency wants to reduce flaring, venting and leaks from production, and said doing so would increase royalties from mineral leasing on federal and tribal lands. Methane is also a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The agency’s current regulations on venting and flaring were adopted more than 35 years ago. The agency consulted with states to see how they handled methane reduction issues and said it used their best practices to shape the proposed rules.
“A lot of gas is being lost, and it’s a wasted resource and a loss of royalty revenue,” said Tim Spisak, a senior adviser for conventional energy at BLM. “For some of the environmental impacts, we’re trying to bring in modern technologies and practices that have developed over the last three or four decades. I think it’s clear our existing regulations need to be updated.”
The proposed rules cover leak inspection and repair schedules and put limits on venting and flaring. It also clarifies federal royalty rates.
Spisak said the proposed rules don’t apply to Osage County, which is regulated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Most operators already voluntarily are reducing methane releases during production, and the BLM expects compliance costs will be minimal. The agency said 84 percent of wells on federal and tribal land already meet its proposed limits for flaring.
Representatives of some energy groups said BLM’s proposal conflicts with methane-reduction rules set by other state and federal agencies. They said much of the problem of flaring could be solved by faster rights of way permitting for gas-gathering lines on federal land and tribal land. That infrastructure would get the gas to market.
Bud Ground, environmental and regulatory affairs consultant at the Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, said BLM’s proposal creates “duplicative and conflicting regulations.” He said the industry already is working with the Environmental Protection Agency on its proposed rules for methane emissions reductions for new and modified equipment.
Ground said operators want to maximize their investments and voluntarily have reduced methane emissions from oil and gas operations by 21 percent since 1990.
“A lot of our venting and flaring currently is because of the amount of time it takes for some of these right-of-way projects to get a pipeline to our production facilities so we can market these products,” Ground said. “Of course we don’t want to vent and flare. We want to capture as much as possible.”
James Roller, vice president of legislative affairs at the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, said the parts of agency’s proposed rule dealing with air quality were outside of the agency’s jurisdiction.
“The industry has been continuously innovating and developing new technology to reduce emissions,” Roller said. “This success, along with market incentive to capture and sell as much natural gas as possible, will continue without new rules from the BLM.”
Members of environmental groups praised the rule as a good first step but said it could be strengthened, especially through more frequent leak inspections.
“The leakage also exacerbates problems associated with climate change, one of the worst being methane, which is one of the strongest greenhouse gases, much stronger than carbon dioxide,” said Johnson Bridgwater, director of the Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter. “Leakage also leads to the formation of ozone in rural areas, giving small towns big-city issues to deal with.”
Mary Francis, a Norman resident and member of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, said venting methane was much more harmful to the environment than flaring and frequently went unreported. She said BLM should require thirdparty monitoring of leaks and increase the inspections to quarterly.
Andrew Williams, with the Environmental Defense Fund, said several Oklahoma companies make equipment to help detect and reduce methane leaks from oil and gas production. He said strengthened and updated BLM regulations would provide new opportunities for those companies.
The Office of Natural Resources Revenue estimated operators lost 375 billion cubic feet of natural gas from federal and tribal onshore leases between 2009 and 2014. That’s enough gas to supply more than 5 million households for a year.
BLM said the updated rules would reduce methane emissions from production on federal and tribal lands by more than 164,000 tons per year. That’s roughly equivalent to eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions from more than 860,000 vehicles.
BLM’s proposal is part of the Obama administration’s goal of reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025.
The public comment period closes April 8.
To comment online, go to regulations.gov and enter the rule’s code, BLM-2016-0001-0004.