As Texas was crippled last month by frigid temperatures that killed more than 100 people and triggered widespread blackouts, drilling companies in the state's largest oil field were forced to burn off an extraordinary amount of natural gas - on the worst day, an amount that could have powered tens of thousands of homes for at least a year.
The need to intentionally burn off, or flare, an estimated 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas in a single day - a fivefold increase from rates seen before the crisis, according to satellite analysis - came as the state's power plants went offline and pipelines froze, so the wells simply had no place to send the natural gas still streaming out of the ground. As a result, the gas had to be set ablaze, fueling towering flames, the highest of which can reach hundreds of feet into the air.
"This is clearly one of the highest spikes" in flaring ever observed in the Permian Basin, said Mark Omara, a senior researcher at the Environmental Defense Fund who led the analysis, which was based on satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "And it could be an underestimate," he said.
The findings are the latest example of the consequences of the Texas crisis that are only now becoming clearer. Far more people died in the winter storm - at least 111 people lost their lives, nearly double an earlier estimate - state officials said Thursday. They also underscore the risks of the state's heavy reliance on natural gas to generate power, even as some fossil-fuel advocates misleadingly tried to blame frozen wind turbines for the blackouts.
Natural gas was once hailed as a "bridge" toward renewable forms of energy such as wind or solar, because gas burns more cleanly than oil coal. But in recent years, researchers and environmental groups have raised growing concerns over the climate-change consequences of turning to natural gas.
"The extreme weather conditions that Texas experienced in February forced many facilities to flare gas, as there was no other exit," Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad, wrote in a research note. "Just immediately closing the gas tap is not possible."