Large multinational oil and gas companies ExxonMobil and BP along with other businesses in the fossil fuel industry have announced their progress towards the reduction of flaring, an energy-wasting practice that intentionally burns natural gas as it rises deep from the earth to the surface. Despite this, data from the three largest shale oil fields in the United States speak a different truth from what these companies had to say about their reduction targets.
Flaring, as well as venting, have significantly increased in practice for the past several years. Natural gas consists mostly of methane, as well as other gases such as ethane, propane, butane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. Burning natural gas converts methane to carbon dioxide in a chemical process called combustion. Methane and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases, which, when accumulated in significantly large amounts trap radiation from leaving the earth, contributing to global warming. The acts of flaring and venting are both "a tremendous waste of a natural resource," according to Riccardo Puliti, global director for energy at the World Bank, in an interview with The New York Times. Venting releases methane into the atmosphere, wasting its potential for other industrial and commercial uses. Flaring wastes energy because the energy produced can be used as fuel for heating, lighting, and cooking, yet companies see the gas as a byproduct to the retrieval of the more lucrative oil from shale rock. Some of these companies retrieve the natural gas by installing pipelines for collection, but drilling for oil often outpaces building pipelines for collection, leaving companies no choice but to vent or flare the natural gas simply. Venting and flaring are legal within state laws, thus, giving oil corporations no restrictions or incentives to dealing with emissions.
The American oil and gas company ExxonMobil has been the largest venter and flarer of natural gas since 2011 among the biggest companies doing business in the three of the United States' oil fields, namely the Eagle Ford Shale, the Permian Basin, and the Bakken Formation. The British company BP has burned off 17% of its natural gas production from April to June 2019, a significant increase from 10% during the same period last year. Overall, flaring has been estimated to contribute around 350 million tons of carbon dioxide last year, equivalent to emissions caused by around 75 million cars.
While these same oil companies have announced their intent to reduce methane emissions to below 0.25 percent of global production by 2025, there lacks an external auditor to check if their emissions are truly within the target. A lack of transparency has been noted by environmental groups with regards to how these companies track their emissions not easily provided merely with venting or flaring statistics. Chevron may be an exception, as analysts have noted the company's rules of drilling in areas where retrieval of natural gas may be difficult. This has lead to the company flaring and venting only 3% of its gas production. BP, on the other hand, has pledged to build facilities that collect and compress natural gas by next year in response to criticism for their flaring and venting practices.