> Turkmenistan isn't producing all that energy for domestic consumption > It's the consumers, not the producers per se that are the problem.

Irrespective of which party is the proximate cause of energy extraction in Turkmenistan, the large volume leakage of methane according to the article is not an inevitable byproduct of oil drilling. What’s more, the incremental costs of controlling methane emissions are tiny. And finally, consumers couldn’t go re-light methane flares at the drill sites even if they wanted to.