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Breaking from Newsmax Newshub
The Dallas Morning News reports that the Permian Basin's largest oil drillers have been releasing or burning up as much as 9 percent of the natural gas they produced as a byproduct, according to a new report from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The result is greater air pollution, destruction of usable natural gas and more of the powerful greenhouse gas methane vented into the atmosphere. The fund, an advocacy group, and others have also warned that "flaring" — industry jargon for burning off natural gas — could threaten the McDonald Observatory in West Texas, which relies on having one of the nation's darkest night skies. The EDF research found that 45.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas was flared in 2015 alone, "enough to serve all of the household needs in Texas Permian counties for 2 1/2 half years." "Striking" is how Todd Davidson, research associate at University of Texas at Austin's Energy Institute, described the findings. "They [EDF] are right," he said. "We need potentially smarter thinking about how we manage our flares."
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