BISMARCK – North Dakota on Thursday was joined by Montana, Texas, and Wyoming in filing a lawsuit in North Dakota Federal District Court, challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s newly finalized methane rule.

The Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation Rule establishes a new royalty on flared gas, institutes monthly limits on allowable flaring and adds new application requirements for operators regarding their ability to capture natural gas before they can obtain a drilling permit.

“North Dakota, like other western states, must contend with added, unnecessary bureaucratic red tape in developing federal minerals,” U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-ND, said. “The Biden administration has released rule after rule to make it more expensive and difficult to produce energy domestically, and this BLM regulation is another example. This mandate flies in the face of reality, and I applaud North Dakota for leading the suit to strike this rule. I look forward to their success in court.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior issued a statement after the rule was finalized in March noting the rule modernizes regulations that are more than 40 years old. The rule requires operators of federal and Indian oil and gas leases to take additional steps to avoid natural gas waste from the very beginning of operations, carry out leak detection and repair across ongoing operations, and cut down on wasteful gas venting and flaring.

The rule also sets new limits on “royalty-free” flaring, estimated to generate more than $50 million in additional natural gas royalty payments each year to federal and tribal mineral owners.

Between 2010 and 2020, the total venting and flaring reported by federal and Indian onshore lessees averaged about 44.2 billion cubic feet per year, enough to serve more than 675,000 homes, the department reported.