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发帖数: 29846 | 1 GAO: Gov't waste of natural gas costing taxpayers millions
By HOPE YEN | May 6, 2015 | 3:15 PM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — Significant amounts of natural gas on federal lands are
being wasted, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars each year and
adding to harmful greenhouse gas emissions, a congressional investigation
has found.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office also said the Bureau of
Land Management failed to conduct production inspections for hundreds of
high-priority oil and gas wells — roughly 1 out of 5 — to ensure full
payment of royalties to the U.S.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press before its public release, is
the latest to highlight substantial gaps in oversight. An AP review of
government records last May found the agency, which manages oil and gas
development on federal and Indian lands, had been overwhelmed by a boom in a
new drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
The GAO report said it had been urging BLM, an agency of the Interior
Department, to update guidelines for the burning or venting of natural gas
since at least 2010, when it found 40 percent of it could be captured
economically and sold. BLM has yet to do so, although agency officials now
say they are in the process of putting together various orders and a
proposed rule for comment later this year.
Until then, government investigators called BLM's management of oil and gas
"high-risk" for waste and fraud.
"The Interior Department has known for at least a decade that companies have
been wasting natural gas from oil and gas wells on public lands," said Sen.
Ron Wyden, D-Ore. "Venting and flaring natural gas from these wells hurts
the environment and speeds up global warming, and it shortchanges the
taxpayers."
He joined Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., the top
Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, in calling on the
department to redouble efforts to stem waste, rather than give "drilling
companies a pass to let millions of taxpayer dollars evaporate into thin air
."
Companies that drill for natural gas pay the federal government a royalty on
the gas they extract; they are also allowed to burn or release publicly-
owned gas from wells in certain amounts for free.
But GAO said BLM was underestimating the amount of gas vented and flared and
failing to collect royalties for that gas. Based on data from the
Environmental Protection Agency, the GAO calculated in 2010 that the
government was losing at least $23 million annually in lost sales, an amount
that environmental groups say has since grown due to increased drilling
activity.
Much of the vented gas is methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 25 times more
potent than carbon dioxide. Using EPA estimates, the GAO concluded that
capturing the vented gas would be the equivalent of removing 3.1 million
cars from the road or closing four average-sized coal-fired power plants.
Pieter Tans, lead scientist of the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network
at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said methane is an
important contributor to global warming, but that carbon dioxide emissions
remained the no. 1 target. "It's more easy to do something about methane
than it is to do something about CO2," he said.
The report also found that BLM repeatedly failed to meet annual inspection
goals for high-risk wells. In 2013, for example, it did not complete
production inspections on 19 percent of the wells it considered at high risk
, GAO said.
The Interior Department generally concurred with the GAO's findings, saying
it had taken steps to improve its data on the venting and flaring and would
update its rules. It generally pointed to a lack of funding for delays and
noted that President Barack Obama had requested more money in his budget for
inspections, in part by collecting fees from oil and gas companies. "This
authority would provide much needed resources to support BLM's cradle to
grave responsibilities for wells," wrote David Haines, deputy assistant
secretary for the Interior Department.
BLM and the Interior Department did not immediately return a request for
further comment. |
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