In almost three decades in the oil and gas industry, I saw a lot.
I moved 22 times; everywhere from Durango to the Norwegian Sea. This included several years in Bloomfield, N.M., helping run truck and pipeline transportation from more than 3,000 wells in the Four Corners to trade centers and final markets.
Oil and gas was, and remains, a profit-driven industry, and firm but fair regulations are needed to provide a level competitive playing field and drive the industry to improve its environmental performance.
Removing lead from gasoline and sulfur from diesel, installing vapor recovery on all gas pumps, and mandating “summer grade” gasoline all significantly reduced dangerous emissions.
All of these measures resulted from regulations implemented over industry protests about costs and complexity. Going back on any of these would be unthinkable now, but they were controversial when first implemented.
This is why I am a strong supporter of new requirements from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to limit the waste of taxpayer-owned natural gas resources.
I realize the local oil and gas industry has been lobbying strongly against these rules (see Christi Zeller’s April 17 op-ed in The Durango Herald). Facts do not support these fears. The oil and gas trade associations in Colorado made the same argument when this state was finalizing its own state-level methane rules. And now, Colorado leaks are down about 70 percent and production is still strong.
Production of natural gas is forecast to increase by more than 55 percent by 2040. If we foster the development of the methane mitigation industry here, the world will be buying American-made products and services – jobs! – to capture valuable methane emissions.
The BLM methane waste rule makes sense for industry and local economies throughout the West. The U.S. Senate (with the unfortunate exception of our Sen. Cory Gardner) just did the right thing by voting to keep this commonsense rule in place.
Wayne Warmack
Durango
