The flaring and venting of natural gas in the U.S. continues to soar, reaching new record highs in recent months. The volume of gas that was burned or simply released into the atmosphere by oil and gas drillers reached 1.28 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2018, according to the EIA , up from 0.772 Bcf/d in 2017. The practice is a disaster on many levels. It is wasteful, it worsens air quality and it exacerbates climate change. Venting gas is much worse than burning it since it releases methane into the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas. The New York Times documented several “super emitters” in the Permian, using infrared cameras to visually capture the epidemic. The NYT even recorded an oil worker walking into an invisible plume of leaking methane. But shale drillers continue the practice and regulators have shown little interest in regulating them. Even though […]