“The war is just getting started, and we have a long way to go.”
West Texas has a gas problem. This arid stretch of scrubland, from Big Spring west to New Mexico, is the country’s most productive region for producing oil and gas. It also carries the dubious distinction of producing massive volumes of methane, a heat-trapping gas that’s nearly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide andto more than 1 million premature deaths annually in the form of ozone pollution.
“Overall, this is the culmination of a lot of work done by stakeholders to get comprehensive methane regulations for new and existing [wells],” says Colin Leyden, the Texas political director for the Environmental Defense Fund. It’s significant that the EPA isn’t distinguishing between newly drilled wells and existing wells when it comes to emissions: New wells aren’t responsible for the bulk of methane emissions, Leyden says. “This is finally addressing existing sources, and that’s a big deal.
But the EPA’s new rules have one major blind spot: They don’t fully address the problem of flaring, which burns off enough gas to powera year in the United States.The practice, where drillers burn off excess natural gas onsite, is sometimes a safety measure to regulate pressure at power plants where the gas is eventually piped to be converted into electricity.
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