Land Management Bureau Delays Costly Gas Meter and Leak Detection Mandates
Department of the Interior
The agency is granting a flat one-year extension on two specific compliance deadlines established back in the 2024 Waste Prevention Rule.
First, operators get a reprieve from installing physical gas measuring devices at well sites, allowing them to keep estimating flared gas volumes based on pressure and duration.
Second, the government is pausing the mandate for operators to establish comprehensive Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) programs.
The BLM looked at the math and realized the juice simply wasn't worth the squeeze.
The agency estimated that LDAR compliance would cost operators $9.2 million annually, only to recover about 0.45 Bcf of gas with a royalty value of just $220,000.
That expensive recovery effort would address a mere 0.5% of the estimated 86 Bcf of total annual gas losses.
Furthermore, forcing operators to install meters doesn't actually act as a pollution-control device or change the volume of gas that gets flared; it just measures it more precisely.
The BLM is kicking these deadlines down the road to save administrative and operational costs while they draft a new proposed rule to revise these provisions entirely.
This applies to oil and gas operators working on Federal and Indian mineral estates.
Here is what the one-year pause explicitly exempts them from for the time being.
Operators do not have to immediately comply with 43 CFR 3179.71, which mandates the installation of gas measuring devices to measure flared volumes.
Operators are also completely exempt for one year from the costly LDAR program requirements detailed in 43 CFR 3179.100.
