Two federal agencies this month took steps that would allow the oil and gas industry to release more methane, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. Critics warned that methane is more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping the Earth’s heat, but some gave wildly divergent figures to describe how much more potent.
Source: How Potent Is Methane? – FactCheck.org
One thing to keep in mind when you see gas being flared rather than just being vented (and given it’s not economical to do so, not being captiured). if you burn methane you get much less harfull to the environment results. 1/80 or 1/25th the badness of methane, depending on the time from (methane bad but goes away in decades or less, co2 does less damage but take 100s to 1000s of years to be eliminated.
