The data suggest a growing amount of taxpayer-owned natural gas is literally going up in flames as companies focus development in oil plays, particularly in New Mexico and North Dakota.
Over the past three years, industry applications to vent or flare gas -- rather than capture it, send it to market and pay federal royalties -- have risen nearly threefold, according to the data from the Bureau of Land Management.
In the past decade, those applications have risen nearly 2,400 percent.
The data come as BLM seeks to rewrite a 34-year-old rule to keep more natural gas in pipelines and ensure a fair return to the U.S. Treasury.
The rise in venting and flaring applications underscores the need for a tough BLM rule, conservationists argue.
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The BLM data could also point to an increase in methane emissions from oil and gas development on public lands.
Methane, which is the main ingredient in natural gas, is more than 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and accounts for about 9 percent of domestic greenhouse gas emissions. One-third of methane emissions come from the oil and gas sector.
Reducing methane emissions -- particularly from the oil and gas industry -- has been a major plank in the Obama administration's climate change platform.
Notably, the BLM applications data do not specify the amount of gas companies are requesting be vented or flared. Nor do they indicate what portion of that gas is proposed for venting, a process that emits far more global warming emissions than flaring.
But the BLM data do support the finding last month in a CAP- and Wilderness Society-commissioned study that methane emissions from venting and flaring on public lands and waters have risen 135 percent from 2008 to 2013 -- increasing to 175,000 metric tons.
Read More at Drilling Companies Flood BLM with Proposals to Burn, Vent Gas
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