Flaring vote shows Senate candidate’s support for North Dakota energy jobs

Natural gas flaring is a legitimate issue for North Dakotans, but a last-minute rule adopted by the Obama administration threatens to derail industry efforts to flaring and improve the efficiency of their operations in the Bakken. The oil and gas industry supports smart, targeted solutions to the excess flaring of natural gas since they lose revenue with every flare stack. The badly written Obama-era rule, though, duplicates existing state and federal regulations on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). As such, the BLM rule poses a very real threat to job creation and economic growth in North Dakota. If left in place, the rule could impact some 96,000 oil and gas wells on federal and Indian lands nationwide, making up to 40 percent uneconomic to operate. The flaring issue is one of the many key differences in the North Dakota Senate race. As a Congressman, Kevin Cramer voted to scrap BLM’s venting and flaring rule; Heidi Heitkamp voted to keep it. The vote is a clear demonstration of who stands with the men and women working in the Bakken. Instead of imposing unnecessary and costly regulations, federal regulators should be working with energy companies to safely build pipelines, processing plants and the other infrastructure needed to capture and deliver gas to market. The oil and gas industry in North Dakota recently reconvened a task force to identify efficient, market-based ways to reduce flaring. Instead of imposing more government relations that hamper innovation and progress, the oil and gas industry needs a partner in North Dakota like Mr. Cramer who understands the importance of jobs and economic activity.