Forcing Permian Basin operators to "save" the natural gas currently being flared would probably increase the price of electricity in Texas because someone has to pay for the pipelines.
If it would decrease the price, then operators could have and would have already increased their profits by building the pipelines to deliver the gas to generating plants.
"building": building collectively and with the help of the financial industry.
You seem to believe that the oil industry consists of vicious subhumans or something that need to be forced to do the right thing even when the right thing co-incides with their economic self-interest.
Problem is pipelines are a regulatory nightmare to build, even in texas. It is getting even harder to build because so much pressure has been focused towards renewables. The northeast has the same issue. Opposition to natural gas pipelines means gas shortage in winter months. They retired their coal plants and now use diesel generators for peak load.
Building out pipelines usually involves eminent domain issues.
It is a tough sell to have one’s property confiscated by the government on behalf of a for-profit entity, especially if lacking funds for legal counsel.
They take land to sell to developers to build strip malls, luxury condos or mixed use buildings (whichever happens to be politically fashionable that minute) often enough that taking it for an actual utility should be no issue.
The problem is that you have a bunch of people who are militantly against anything fossil fuel because it's part of their political identity who get their politicians to block any fossil fuel utility project.
Sure, fossil fuels aren't good in the long term but only an idiot would deny that having more natgas available cheaply resulting in less power being generated by and fewer people heating their house with oil is a significant improvement over the status quo.
I have a brother going through this right now. They want to build pipeline on his property.
He can't really say no because of eminent domain, but he has a lawyer and is fighting for a fair contract (pay for everything they break/destroy etc when building it). Most people are SOL.
Not sure if you're responding to me or someone else but I did work at an Enron pipeline subsidiary back in the day and heard all the stories of slapped together wellhead gas collection that was literally plumbed with household-grade PVC pipe. It really came up in the context of operators looking to break out of those contracts because at the time gas was getting expensive enough they wanted to sell direct rather than through the aggregator who had plumbed up all the wellheads and locked them in to some low-paying contracts.
And as I mentioned in the linked article now folks are flaring because it's cheaper than connection even if there's one available. From their perspective breaking contacts back then and flaring off now are just good business, so yes I 100% believe they'll do what's in their own economic self-interest.
If you happen to believe in global warming, then whether flaring that gas is in their own long term self interest is a separate conversation.
> You seem to believe that the oil industry consists of vicious subhumans or something that need to be forced to do the right thing even when the right thing co-incides with their economic self-interest.
Their economic short term interest, yes. Gas burned off wastefully is not available in the future and we have this small global warming problem.
If it would decrease the price, then operators could have and would have already increased their profits by building the pipelines to deliver the gas to generating plants.
"building": building collectively and with the help of the financial industry.
You seem to believe that the oil industry consists of vicious subhumans or something that need to be forced to do the right thing even when the right thing co-incides with their economic self-interest.