The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has finalized a rule designed to curb methane pollution from oil and natural gas production on federal and Tribal lands, in part by collecting royalty payments on flared gas.

The Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation rule, which was proposed in late 2022 and finalized last week, “modernizes existing BLM regulations to require current technology and practices to better account for the waste of natural gas,” BLM said. “It requires operators of federal and Indian oil and gas leases to take reasonable 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...