FILE - Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announces that her agency will work to restore more large bison herds during a speech for World Wildlife Day at the National Geographic Society in Washington, Friday, March 3, 2023.
The final rule will help “prevent waste, protect our environment and ensure a fair return to American taxpayers,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement. Venting and flaring activity from oil and gas production on public lands has significantly increased in recent decades. Between 2010 and 2020, total volumes of natural gas lost to venting and flaring on federal and tribal lands averaged about 44.2 billion cubic feet per year — enough to serve roughly 675,000 homes, the Interior said. The figure represents a sharp increase from an annual average of 11 billion cubic feet lost to venting and flaring in the 1990s.
“API supports a smart regulatory framework for reducing methane emissions, but overlapping regulations and lack of coordination between policymakers could hinder progress, create unnecessary barriers to development on federal lands and result in regulatory incoherence,'' said Holly Hopkins, an API vice president.