Oil wells in Texas produce a lot of excess natural gas, and the Texas Railroad Commission, the group that regulates oil and gas in that state, said Tuesday it’s implementing changes in the hopes of reducing the amount that gets burned off in a process called flaring. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that oil companies operating in the Permian Basin of West Texas wasted $750 million worth of natural gas in 2018. “Increasingly, you’re seeing third-party data collection operation through drones, satellites and flights, which are collecting and beginning to make public very, very granular data,” said Varun Rai, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. “And that’s just bringing a whole different level of scrutiny of the operations.”
