• 3 minutes e-car sales collapse
  • 6 minutes America Is Exceptional in Its Political Divide
  • 11 minutes Perovskites, a ‘dirt cheap’ alternative to silicon, just got a lot more efficient
  • 10 mins GREEN NEW DEAL = BLIZZARD OF LIES
  • 7 hours How Far Have We Really Gotten With Alternative Energy
  • 9 hours If hydrogen is the answer, you're asking the wrong question
  • 4 days Oil Stocks, Market Direction, Bitcoin, Minerals, Gold, Silver - Technical Trading <--- Chris Vermeulen & Gareth Soloway weigh in
  • 6 days The European Union is exceptional in its political divide. Examples are apparent in Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belarus, Ireland, etc.
  • 22 hours Biden's $2 trillion Plan for Insfrastructure and Jobs
  • 4 days "What’s In Store For Europe In 2023?" By the CIA (aka RFE/RL as a ruse to deceive readers)
Tajikistan’s Controversial Roghun Dam 'Too Big to Fail'

Tajikistan’s Controversial Roghun Dam 'Too Big to Fail'

Tajikistan is pushing forward with…

The Hunt for White Hydrogen Has Begun

The Hunt for White Hydrogen Has Begun

Mined natural hydrogen (also called…

Cargo Plane Startup Taking Turbine Transportation to New Heights

Cargo Plane Startup Taking Turbine Transportation to New Heights

Radia's WindRunner cargo plane design…

Nick Cunningham

Nick Cunningham

Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist, covering oil and gas, energy and environmental policy, and international politics. He is based in Portland, Oregon. 

More Info

Premium Content

Emissions Soar As Permian Flaring Frenzy Breaks New Records

The flaring and venting of natural gas in the U.S. continues to soar, reaching new record highs in recent months.

The volume of gas that was burned or simply released into the atmosphere by oil and gas drillers reached 1.28 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2018, according to the EIA, up from 0.772 Bcf/d in 2017.

The practice is a disaster on many levels. It is wasteful, it worsens air quality and it exacerbates climate change. Venting gas is much worse than burning it since it releases methane into the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas.

The New York Times documented several “super emitters” in the Permian, using infrared cameras to visually capture the epidemic. The NYT even recorded an oil worker walking into an invisible plume of leaking methane.  

But shale drillers continue the practice and regulators have shown little interest in regulating them. Even though venting is off limits in North Dakota and restricted in Texas, flaring has largely gone unchecked while methane leaks at virtually every stage of the extraction process.

In the third quarter of 2019, the Permian basin alone vented and flared 752 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, up sharply from 661 mcf/d in the first quarter, according to Rystad Energy. “This represents a new all-time high. Oil production in the Permian Basin is growing at an accelerated pace again, and we observe high, sustained levels of flaring and venting of associated gas in the basin,” Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad, said in November.

Some oil companies trumpet their reduced rate of flaring, but others have flared at higher rates. “A significant number of operators have exhibited a clear downwards shift in flaring intensity in 2019. Yet there are other examples of a recent increase in flaring intensity, which are primarily represented by some operators active in the Eastern Midland Basin,” Abramov said. Related: OPEC+ Agrees To Deeper Output Cuts

“It’s a black eye for the Permian basin,” Pioneer Natural Resources Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said earlier this year. “The state, the pipeline companies and the producers -- we all need to come together to figure out a way to stop the flaring.”

One thing that could be done would be for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the industry in the state, to deny permits to companies that allow them to flare. But the Railroad Commission has not denied a single request from an oil producer for a flaring permit in years, despite the spike in flaring. The number of permits granted has shot up from around 500 in 2010 to 5,500 in 2018, according to the EIA. There is essentially no cop on the beat.

Earthworks, an environmental group, has extensively documented methane leaks from oil and gas operations, and has filed over 103 complaints with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “Our field research and complaints of oil and gas operations are doing the job that Texas regulators ought to be doing to protect the public,” Earthworks’ Senior Policy Counsel Aaron Mintzes said in a statement.

The situation reached absurd levels a few months ago when the Texas Railroad Commission approved a company’s request to flare even though the company had pipeline access readily available. One of the main reasons that flaring has reached astronomical levels is because pipeline capacity has not kept up with the surge in gas production. Because the industry is really chasing oil, all of the gas is surplus. And because there is nowhere to put it, they flare it.

That’s the argument anyways. But Williams Cos., a pipeline giant, is suing the Texas Railroad Commission over the agency’s recent decision to grant a flaring permit to Exco Operating Co. Exco has wells in the Eagle Ford that are already connected to a pipeline, but Exco balked at paying the fees. Instead, it just wanted to burn the gas. It’s worth reemphasizing this – the company doesn’t actually need to flare the gas for any technical reason, it just doesn’t want to pay to ship it. Related: Iran: We Won’t Agree To Any Production Cuts In The Future

The Railroad Commission granted the permit. Now, Williams Cos. is suing the commission for failing to uphold the state’s own regulations on flaring.

Coming under fire, the Railroad Commission has sought to defend itself. “That’s a very unique case that we almost never see,” Ryan Sitton, a Republican commissioner at the agency, said on Bloomberg Television Thursday, referring to the Exco case. “All we did was grant a permit for seven months to allow the producer to continue to flare while we try to work this out.” Bloomberg notes that the Railroad Commission has issued around 7,000 permits this year, allowing companies to vent or flare.

ADVERTISEMENT

“At the end of the day, you’ve got 27 million Texans, and what they want is affordable, reliable energy,” Sitton said. “And they want our energy industry to do well.”

Meanwhile, natural gas is often likened to a “bridge fuel,” but it is now the main driver of higher greenhouse gas emissions globally. “Gas is a major concern,” Bill Hare, chief executive officer of Climate Analytics, told Bloomberg. “Governments are acting as if this fossil fuel is somehow clean. Yet gas was responsible for half the increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption in 2017-18.”

By Nick Cunningham for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:


Download The Free Oilprice App Today

Back to homepage





Leave a comment
  • Lee James on December 14 2019 said:
    Meanwhile, we patiently await the "Wisdom of the Marketplace" to do its thing. It'd be ideal if the marketplace would go ahead and self-correct. What's the hang up? When you can dump pollutants for free, it might be awhile before we admit to the real cost of greenhouse gas pollution.

    By then, it will literally be too late. Something to think about . . . should we take out an insurance policy and do something now?

    Thanks for publishing this heads-up about oil field pollution, OilPrice.
  • Old-Ruffneck Smith on December 14 2019 said:
    The flaring in in Texas is dropping ever so slightly, while New Mexico (S.E.) is picking up the slack. Have you asked yourself why so much flaring is going on? Do some real investigative reporting and please come back with the answers.
  • Kay Uwe Boehm on December 14 2019 said:
    USA should quickly build up 700bar CNG fuel stations like iran, india, china, brasilia, italy, pakistan, bolivia, BRD etc. !
  • Al Green on December 15 2019 said:
    Not sure how methane could be the leading source of CO2.
  • Binkley North on December 16 2019 said:
    Thank you for reporting on it - as a staunch investor in oil and gas and pipelines I'm very interested in a responsible image and a level playing field for companies that do it right.

Leave a comment




EXXON Mobil -0.35
Open57.81 Trading Vol.6.96M Previous Vol.241.7B
BUY 57.15
Sell 57.00
Oilprice - The No. 1 Source for Oil & Energy News