The largest United States oil lobbying group is launching a program encouraging companies to curb flaring, the practice of intentionally burning natural gas, which has become a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
The American Petroleum Institute will announce Wednesday morning that it is expanding its Environmental Partnership initiative to include a program in which participating companies report data on how much they flare and share best practices on how to limit it.
“This program will help the industry collectively improve operations and continue to drive down emissions,” Matthew Todd, program director of the Environmental Partnership, told the Washington Examiner.
The American Petroleum Institute created the partnership in 2017 to encourage oil and gas companies to reduce leaks of methane, a greenhouse gas more potent but shorter-lived in the atmosphere than carbon, in the course of their operations.
The partnership has since grown from 24 members to more than 80, representing over 70% of onshore U.S. oil and natural gas production. But it previously did not address flaring, which happens when companies burn extra unwanted natural gas as a waste that is produced in the course of drilling for oil.
Companies generally resort to flaring when there is insufficient pipeline or other infrastructure to transport the natural gas for use. Flaring primarily emits carbon, but some of the natural gas can escape as methane.
U.S. producers vented or flared 1.48 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas as waste last year, reaching a record annual average, the Energy Information Administration reported this month, as oil output has boomed in Texas and North Dakota. Venting is the direct release of natural gas into the atmosphere during the development process.
Investor and public pressures are prompting oil companies to promise to limit flaring. Just this week, U.S. oil giant Exxon said it plans to eliminate routine flaring by 2030 and, in the meantime, reduce its flaring intensity, a measure of flaring relative to the level of production.
Todd said the American Petroleum Institute program intends to build on company efforts by promoting best practices across the industry, including among smaller producers that don’t have expertise in curbing flaring but benefit from the information.
Participating companies will report their flaring intensity, which will be publicly released as part of the Environmental Partnership’s annual report.
Environmental groups critical of the American Petroleum Institute’s effort, however, consider the reporting program weak because it does not require any overarching emissions reduction target of participating companies seeking to curb methane and flaring.
Critics also say the American Petroleum Institute and oil companies should be focusing on encouraging stronger government regulation of methane and against flaring.
Vanessa Ryan, manager of the carbon reduction team at Chevron and chairwoman of the Environmental Partnership, suggested that setting a lower bar for entry encourages more companies to participate.
Chevron, the U.S. oil giant, set its own target to reduce flaring intensity more than a year ago and has outperformed Exxon on reducing the practice, but Ryan said her company wants to share its expertise with others.
“We want anyone who wants to reduce flaring to be a part of this,” Ryan told the Washington Examiner. “We don’t want to put in unnecessarily high barriers to join. If you have to have exemplary flaring performance to join, you probably won’t see big changes.”
