"The Bureau of Land Management ignored requests for a public hearing on the proposed rules for venting and flaring methane on public and tribal lands, hindering community members’ efforts to reduce the impacts of gas releases."
"Oil companies collect crude in tanks by their pumps but often vent the methane gas that also comes up out of the ground into the air, unwilling to invest in the infrastructure to capture it.
While the companies pay royalties to landowners for the liquid petroleum they take, no payments are made for the vented methane, a wasted resource that is more than 80 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Oil companies also burn methane at the wellhead through a practice known as flaring, either to reduce pressure as a safety precaution or, more typically, to dispose of unwanted natural gas that surfaces as a byproduct of oil extraction. Methane is the primary component of natural gas.
Federal regulators have struggled to rein in this massive source of greenhouse gas emissions through venting and flaring. A new rule advancing at the Bureau of Land Management proposes to charge oil producers for the gas they release or burn on federal and Indigenous land."
Autumn Jones reports for Inside Climate News February 15, 2023.
