Natural Gas Flaring, Part 3: Economic Based Flaring
The exponential increase in flaring for economic reasons has become the prime mover in the current natural gas flaring discussion. For instance, from 2010 to 2019 the Texas Railroad Commission reported a 20X increase in flaring permit applications, going from approximately 300 in 2010 to 7000 in 2019. Those are big numbers, but data always needs to be kept in context. As of 2019 data, there were approximately 265,000 producing wells in the State of Texas. Against this total, the 7000 looks less staggering.