A Secret Recording Reveals Oil Executives’ Private Views on Climate Change

A spokeswoman for Mr. Ness, Kristen Hamman, declined to confirm his remarks, saying that the Independent Petroleum Association had not produced an official transcript of the meeting that would allow her to do a comparison. Mr. Ness has publicly spoken against the need to strengthen regulation of methane, a major component in natural gas, calling stronger rules “an unnecessary burden” and saying the industry already produced “valuable energy resources in a responsible manner.”

The remarks reflect the concerns of an industry that has presented itself as part of the solution to climate change, and natural gas as an important “bridge fuel” that can help the world shift away from coal, the dirtiest-burning energy source, toward renewable energy.

Natural gas, when burned (whether in a flare, or to fuel a household oven), typically emits just half the planet-warming greenhouse gases that coal does. But by flaring off natural gas, rather than capturing it for use, companies are creating pollution without creating usable energy.

Many companies do directly drill for and capture natural gas for use. But researchers have warned that drilling for the gas also causes sizable leaks of methane directly into the atmosphere, which is even more damaging for the climate than flaring the gas. Methane can also escape faulty flares, and companies sometimes also deliberately release the gas from wells and pipelines in a practice known as venting.

Methane can trap more than 80 times more heat in the earth’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide, over the shorter term. Research has shown that methane emissions from oil and gas production are far larger than previously estimated.

To address the issue, the Obama administration had proposed new regulations that would have required, among other measures, that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from their wells, pipelines and storage facilities.

Image Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said of natural gas: “The value of it is very minimal. But you’ve got to manage your gas to produce your oil.” Credit... Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune, via Associated Press

But a coalition of oil and gas companies pushed the Trump administration to abandon those rules. It said the industry was already regulated by state laws and was already equipped to plug leaks on its own without federal rules. Lobbyists argued that the companies were already incentivized to rein in methane emissions, given that gas is a valuable resource.