Natural gas flaring, respiratory health, and distributional effects

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Blundell, Wesley; Kokoza, Anatolii
• 署名单位: Washington State University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104601
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Flaring; Air pollution; Shale development; Respiratory health; Distributional implications

摘要

Although there is strong evidence that oil and natural gas development lead to decreases in local ambient air quality, there is less evidence of a causal link between these activities and human health. This paper explores the environmental health costs of burning natural gas by-products during crude oil extraction flaring. We estimate the impact of flared natural gas on respiratory health by using quasi-random variation in upwind flaring generated by the interaction of wind patterns and natural gas processing capacity. Specifically, we construct a novel dataset to estimate the causal effect of increased upwind flaring on the monthly respiratory-related hospital visitation rate by using the number of upwind wells that are connected to a capacity-constrained natural gas processing facility as an instrument for monthly upwind flaring. We find that a 1% increase in the amount of flared natural gas in North Dakota would increase the respiratory-related hospital visitation rate by 0.73%. Furthermore, zip codes that were exposed to more than half of all flared natural gas extracted less than 20% of all resource wealth during the sample time period, and the zip codes exposed to a disproportionate amount of flaring tend to be economically-disadvantaged and communities of color. Our estimates indicate that the health costs constitute a material portion of the external cost of flaring, and therefore ought to be considered in global initiatives to reduce flaring. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.