July 17, 2019 – Wall Street Journal
Texas Showdown Flares Up Over Natural-Gas Waste
By Rebecca Elliott
A pipeline company is challenging Texas’ practice of allowing drillers to set unwanted natural gas on fire, in a case that could test state limits for how much of the fuel can legally go to waste.
As shale companies turned America into the world’s top oil producer, they unlocked massive quantities of natural gas as a byproduct and Texas has allowed them to freely burn off vast volumes as area pipelines fill up. The process is known as flaring…
Read the full article here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-showdown-flares-up-over-natural-gas-waste-11563361201
…Natural-gas pipeline construction in Texas, home to America’s hottest oil field, the Permian Basin, has lagged far behind production growth, in part because producers have been reluctant to commit to long-term contracts. The state’s gas output is expected to increase about 30% over the next five years, according to consulting firm RBN Energy.
In the region’s two largest oil basins, the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford, operators flared or vented—where gas is released without being burned—into the atmosphere an average of about 740 million cubic feet of gas a day during the first quarter, according to public data compiled by energy analytics firm Rystad Energy. That gas would be worth about $1.8 million a day at current prices and produced greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that of nearly five million cars driving for a day, according to estimates from the World Bank and the Environmental Protection Agency.
