Oil & Gas

The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) has adopted revisions to the instructions to Form PR, Monthly Production Report. The revisions support the RRC’s regulation of flaring and venting of produced natural gas. The proposed revisions are to the Form PR Instructions, how operators need to complete the form, not to the structure of the form itself.

The adopted revisions include three changes to the Form PR Instructions.

• “Disposition Code 4”, which was used to report the volume of gas that was vented or flared, has been discontinued. 
• Two new disposition codes have been implemented to allow operators to allocate gas. For gas that was flared, use “Disposition Code 10”. For gas that was vented, use “Disposition Code 11”. This change will allow the RRC to quantify the legal disposition of gas that was flared and vented.
• When an operator allocates gas to Disposition Codes 10 or 11, the operator will be required to enter one or more two-letter codes to the existing “REMARKS” field on the form. Those two letter codes correspond to the authority under which the gas was flared or vented, and include the following:

• AR – Authorized by Rule
• AE – Authorized by Exception
• EP – Exception Pending
• EX – Exempt

The former Form PR Instructions required an operator to “Indicate why the gas was vented or flared in REMARKS on Form PR”. The revised form makes these remarks uniform by requiring categorization of the authorization for the release.

Form PR is being adopted now, but the implementation will be delayed providing operators and the RRC time to make changes to their production reporting systems. Operators will continue to use the existing Form PR until the phased implementation, which will be as follows:

• On September 1, 2021, Disposition Code 4 will no longer be accepted. Gas that is flared must be allocated to Disposition Code 10 and gas that is vented must be allocated to Disposition Code 11.
• On January 1, 2022, operators must report the applicable 2-letter authorization codes in the “REMARKS” field on the form.

To view the Form PR and its instructions, visit the RRC website at  https://rrc.texas.gov/oil-and-gas/oil-and-gas-forms/.