Oil and gas industries release far more greenhouse gases than government data accounts for, investigation finds

University of Arizona photo

U.S. oil and gas operators release much more greenhouse gas than previous data suggests, a new investigation shows.

"Over much of the last decade, oil and gas operators in Texas and a dozen other U.S. states have flared, or burned off, at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism" at Arizona State University, Laura Kraegel, Mollie Jamison and Aydali Campa report for Inside Climate News. "That’s the greenhouse gas emissions equivalent of nearly 42 million cars driving for a year. The industry has also directly released unknown amounts of gas into the atmosphere through a process called venting. Between them, flaring and venting release a noxious cocktail of carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants."

Government auditors have warned for nearly two decades that inadequate data collection has obscured the amount of greenhouse gases released by flaring and venting, "but regulators are largely unaware of the amount of gas being flared and vented, the Howard Center found. It’s a blind spot that’s developed under limited federal oversight and a patchwork of state regulations, lax enforcement and inconsistent data collection," Kraegel, Jamison and Campa report. "The satellite flaring volumes calculated by the Howard Center, with the guidance of scientists who pioneered and used the methodology, far exceed the total reported to regulatory agencies in the 13 states designated by the U.S. Energy Department as having the most active flaring. They also far surpassed the total published by the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Energy Department analytics agency that says it gets its data from the states."

The story is the first in a four-part series by the Howard Center about the flaring and venting of natural gas by oil and gas companies in more than a dozen states across the country.