The U.S. Interior Department is preparing to hold a public meeting later this month in Oklahoma City on a proposed rule targeting the practice of “flaring” or what Interior Secretary Sally Jewell calls the “harmful release of natural gas.”
The meeting will be held Feb. 18 from 1 p.m. to 4p.m. at the Renaissance Convention Center hotel. It is one of several planned in oil and gas producing states after the government proposed to update the 30-year old regulations on public and American Indian lands.
“The proposed rule on venting, flaring and leaking will help curb waste of our nation’s natural gas supplies, reduce harmful methane emissions and provide a fair return on public resources for federal taxpayers, Tribes and States,” said Jewell in recently announcing the hearings.
She said with U.S. oil production at its highest level in nearly 30 years, vast amounts of natural gas from public and Indian lands are lost through the venting and flaring operations. Between 2009 and 2014, enough natural gas was lost through the flaring and venting to power more than five million homes for a year, according to Jewell and the Interior Department.
The proposed new rule would require oil and gas producers to adopt currently available technologies, processes and equipment that would limit the rate of flaring at oil wells on public and tribal lands and would require operators to periodically inspect their operations for leaks and to replace outdated equipment that vents large quantities of gas into the air.
The Bureau of Land Management under the Interior Department is taking the step in the wake of action by Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming and Pennsylvania as well as the Environmental Protection Agency to limit the venting, flaring and leaks of the methane gas.
“It’s time to modernize our regulations to reflect today’s technologies and meet today’s priorities,” said Neil Kornze, director of the BLM. “By asking regulators to take simple, common-sense actions to reduce waste, like swapping out old equipment and checking for leaks, we expect to cut this waste almost in half. The gas saved would be enough to supply every household in the cities of Dallas and Denver combined—every year.”
“The commonsense and cost-effctive measures we are proposing reflect the recommendations of several government studies as well as stakeholder views and tribal consultation over the last two years,” explained Janice Schnider, the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. “These updated regulations, which would be phased in over several years to allow operators to make the transition more cost efficiently, would not only get more of our nation’s natural gas into pipelines and delivered to market but also reduce pollution and cut greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change.”
