States oversee most regulation of oil and gas extraction in the United States. When relying on regulation, state oil and gas agencies may be susceptible to capture by firms developing resources. This may be particularly problematic during booms of resource development when information asymmetries are largest and existing regulations risk becoming obsolete. If regulators are captured, they may take actions that serve concentrated private interests in preference to the public interests they are charged with upholding. I develop and test hypotheses that oil and gas regulators are captured. The primary empirical tests use data from state regulation in North Dakota to prevent resource waste by restricting natural gas flaring. The empirical results are consistent with the theory of regulatory capture, providing empirical evidence that captured regulators serve well-organized specific interests in preference to diffuse general interests. These results provide novel granular evidence of the mechanisms for regulatory capture by showing differences in regulatory responses across firms and locations. This detailed evidence has implications for the design of regulations and reliance on regulatory interventions to protect the public interest.

美国石油和天然气开采的大部分监管由各州监管。当依赖监管时，国家石油和天然气机构可能很容易被资源开发公司夺取。在资源开发繁荣时期，当信息不对称最大且现有法规面临过时的风险时，这可能尤其成问题。如果监管机构被抓获，他们可能会采取服务于集中私人利益而不是他们负责维护的公共利益的行动。我提出并测试了石油和天然气监管机构被捕获的假设。主要的实证测试使用北达科他州州监管的数据，通过限制天然气燃烧来防止资源浪费。实证结果与监管捕获理论一致，提供经验证据表明，被俘虏的监管机构优先服务于组织良好的特定利益，而不是分散的普遍利益。这些结果通过显示不同公司和地点的监管反应差异，为监管捕获机制提供了新颖的颗粒证据。这些详细的证据对于法规的设计和依赖监管干预来保护公共利益具有重要意义。