By by Martha Pskowski, Inside Climate News, and Mark Olalde, ProPublica
September 3rd, 2025
Texas regulators tout their efforts to curtail oil field emissions by requiring drillers to obtain permits to release or burn gas from their wells.
Yet a first-of-its-kind analysis of permit applications to the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s main oil and gas regulator, reveals a rubber-stamp system that allows drillers to emit vast amounts of natural gas into the atmosphere. Over 40 months — from May 2021 to September 2024 — oil companies applied for more than 12,000 flaring and venting permits, while the Railroad Commission rejected just 53 of them, a 99.6% approval rate, according to the data.
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