This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for their daily newsletter, The Beacon.
Billions of cubic feet of natural gas are burned off in U.S. oil and gas fields every year, wasting the fossil fuel and emitting greenhouse gases without actually generating energy. In Texas alone, state regulators have permitted companies to burn more than a million cubic feet of gas every day since 2019. Combined, that would be enough natural gas to supply 15 million homes’ annual gas needs.
Fossil fuel companies choose to burn natural gas instead of capturing and selling it for a variety of safety and economic reasons. Most commonly, oil fields have a gas glut and insufficient pipeline capacity to move it to refineries and markets. The solution to the logjam is to burn excess natural gas—which is primarily composed of methane, a potent planet-warming pollutant—with the permission of state regulators.
