Energy Exchange

5 questions on flaring for investors to ask oil and gas companies

By Dominic Watson / Published: July 15, 2020

For investors concerned with environmental, social and governance issues, flaring poses one of the most immediate and material risks to shareholder value in the oil and gas industry. For an industry that prides itself on operational excellence, flaring is a waste of potentially saleable product and an unsustainable industry practice with detrimental climate and public health effects.

But the practice of routine flaring, which burns off natural gas at oil and gas sites when producers are unprepared to transport or store the fuel, is also a challenge with clear opportunity for solutions. As J.P. Morgan Asset Management recently observed, “flaring is a problem with multiple solutions and a compelling long-term economic proposition.”

As industry, investors and Texas regulators begin to acknowledge the problem, how can shareholders support management teams’ continuous improvement and understand which operators are getting it right and which are not keeping pace?

Asking the right questions through shareholder engagement is a good place to start.

Also posted in Air Quality, Natural Gas, Texas / Tagged New Mexico | Comments are closed

Mexico can rebuild a cleaner, stronger energy economy post COVID-19

By Daniel Zavala-Araiza / Published: June 22, 2020

This piece was first published in El Universal

Times of great turmoil sometimes bring the opportunity for great progress. As leaders around the world work to protect the sick and vulnerable from COVID-19, while also moving to restart their economies, they have a chance to rebuild better — creating a world that’s cleaner and healthier than before. This means investing in an economy that creates more jobs and less pollution, including less of the air pollution that causes diseases that put people at higher risk for severe illness from COVID-19.

It should be a world with fewer deaths from heart and lung disease triggered by air pollution, a world with a safer and more stable climate for our children and grandchildren. This is the kind of world we can create if we heed the lessons of this terrible pandemic.

Also posted in Air Quality, Clean Energy, Climate, Electric Vehicles, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas / Tagged Mexico | Comments are closed

The energy job market is in trouble. Here’s how we fix it.

By Mark Brownstein / Published: June 11, 2020

The coronavirus is inflicting a heavy toll on America: Over 100,000 dead, almost two million infected, and more than 40 million unemployed. Beating the virus is the top priority. But we also need to put people back to work as fast as safety allows. How we go about that now will determine our nation’s economic future for decades.

To achieve lasting prosperity, we need to rebuild better by investing in jobs that restart the economy, improve the environment and move us to a cleaner future.

Also posted in Air Quality, Clean Energy, Climate, Energy Efficiency, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas, Renewable Energy / Comments are closed

To fix flaring, Railroad Commission must tackle the incentive problem

By EDF Blogs / Published: May 29, 2020

Previously published in Shale Magazine

By Colin Leyden and Scott Anderson

A remarkable thing happened at the Texas Railroad Commission these past few weeks. Throughout the contentious debate over proration, a growing chorus of voices on both sides was calling on the commissioners to address flaring — an incredibly wasteful, environmentally damaging practice that has been giving producers a black eye for years.

During the epic 10-hour proration hearing on April 14, it wasn’t just environmental and health groups banging the drum on flaring. Large and small producers (both for and against proration), mineral rights groups and investors all called for action on flaring. So while proration may be off the agenda for now, the need and desire to address flaring lives on.

Also posted in Air Quality, Climate, Methane regulatons, Natural Gas, PermianMAP, Texas / Comments are closed

A zero flaring policy is long overdue, and investors can help make it reality

By Ben Ratner / Published: May 27, 2020

As investors take a hard look at the U.S. energy sector during this time of volatility, natural gas flaring is one of the most important and immediate risks to manage.

The eyesore of the oilfield, flaring natural gas destroys shareholder value and creates environmental, social and governance risk — exactly the kind of problem that an increasing number of asset managers, investment banks, and even private equity firms have promised to address.

Routine flaring is damaging the environment in several ways. In addition to the CO2 emissions from combusted gas, flares can release significant amounts of methane into the atmosphere. EDF’s recent helicopter survey found that more than one in every 10 flares at oil and gas sites across the Permian Basin was either unlit — venting uncombusted methane straight to the atmosphere — or only partially burning the gas they were releasing. In fact, the survey suggests that flaring could be among the region’s largest sources of fugitive methane and a troublesome contributor to local air pollution.

Also posted in Air Quality, Climate, Natural Gas, PermianMAP, Texas / Tagged New Mexico | Comments are closed

A bright future for continuous methane detection

By Ben Ratner / Published: May 20, 2020

Over the last decade, a trove of scientific studies has established that not only are methane emissions from oil and gas operations a major contributor to climate change, but also that they are severely underestimated and underreported.

EDF has been at the forefront of research to detect and quantify the magnitude of oil and gas methane emissions. And we’ve also helped develop solutions that make large-scale emission reductions easier, faster and cheaper. A new initiative led by The University of Texas at Austin called Project ASTRA is a promising, multi-year experiment with the potential to build on and complement other efforts aimed at scaling global reductions of oil and gas methane emissions.

Also posted in PermianMAP / Comments are closed