Everything's Bigger In Texas, Esp. Scale Of Gas Flaring, Degree Of Utter Indifference By Regulators

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The Texas Railroad Commission, or RRC, is the state agency tasked with regulating the oil and gas industry and overseeing companies’ flaring practices. When fossil fuel companies want to flare, they’re required to request a permit from the agency. But a new analysis by Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit, has found compelling evidence that they often don’t bother to. In fact, more than two-thirds of the 227 flares observed during three months in 2020 were not permitted by the state, according to the group, potentially leaving the RRC in the dark. “They don’t know about the majority of flaring that goes on in Texas,” said Alan Septoff, a spokesperson for the nonprofit. “All of the state data that they’re basing their policy decisions on is bunk.”

When natural gas is burned during flaring, methane is converted to carbon dioxide that’s released into the atmosphere. But flares often don’t fully combust or are left unlit, which results in methane being vented directly into the air — an even more potent contribution to climate change. The Earthworks report counts both lit and unlit flares and adds to a growing body of evidence that methane emissions from oil and gas fields are vastly undercounted. It’s also the first analysis to identify what could constitute widespread illegal flaring in Texas oil fields.

Tim Doty, a former employee with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or TCEQ, reviewed Earthworks’ analysis and told Grist that he “wasn’t particularly surprised” by the findings. As an investigator for the regulatory agency’s enforcement division until his retirement in 2018, he said it was common knowledge that there were a “lot of unregulated emissions” in oil fields. (While flaring permits are granted by the RRC, the TCEQ is responsible for overseeing air quality in the state and has jurisdiction over emissions from flares.) “The system is really built on an honor system,” he said. “You hope the actual field activities are reflective of the paperwork.”

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Jack McDonald, a field analyst for Earthworks, primarily relied on two datasets to identify unpermitted flares in Texas. The first was provided by the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental nonprofit that has been researching methane emissions from oil fields and finding that companies often underestimate how much gas they release into the atmosphere. This dataset documented flares observed by helicopter flyovers conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund in January, March, and June 2020. McDonald then obtained a second dataset of permitted flares from the RRC through a public records request. He compared the flares observed during the flyovers to the list of flares that were actually permitted by the state.

The findings were stark. In at least 69 percent of the cases, McDonald was unable to locate any permits for the observed flares. Almost 80 percent of flares that were surveyed twice by Environmental Defense Fund helicopters were found to be unpermitted on both occasions. In 36 cases where flares were surveyed three times, more than half were unpermitted on all three occasions. Among the worst offenders, according to the report, are Shell and ExxonMobil — companies that have made public commitments to reducing their methane emissions. None of the seven observed flares tied to Shell’s operations were permitted, according to McDonald. In Exxon’s case, just two of eight flares observed were permitted.

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https://grist.org/accountability/flaring-methane-texas-shell-exxon-oil-natural-gas/