Oil companies operating in the Permian Basin of West Texas burned and wasted a record $750 million worth of natural gas in 2018, a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, or IEEFA, shows.
Permian Basin operators wasted an estimated 238.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2018 by burning it at oil wells in an industry practice known as flaring or releasing it directly into the atmosphere in another practice known as venting, IEEFA reported.
Cross-referencing commodity prices on days the natural gas was burned, IEEFA estimates that Permian Basin operators burned a record $749.9 million of natural gas in 2018, nearly double the value wasted the previous year.
West Texas: Pollution from Permian Basin flaring to drop to record lows
Oil wells in the Permian Basin produce a large amount of natural gas as a byproduct. But with a lack of gathering pipelines to move it to market, most operators obtain permits from the Railroad Commission of Texas to burn it on site.
That flared natural gas, IEEFA said, could have been sold and taxed to produce revenues for companies and royalties for the state.
"Flaring is a gratuitous display of oversupply with detrimental consequences for the environment and is, simultaneously, an impediment to the growth requirements of the Texas economy," the report's authors wrote.
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June 13, 2020 at 01:37AM
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