Natural gas is cheap. Pipelines are expensive. So instead of collecting the fossil fuel, many oil and gas operators build tall, metallic spires called flare stacks to burn the gas and release it into the Texas sky.

For years, no one could say with any certainty how much natural gas was going to waste. Everyone knew flaring in shale country was a problem. But officials at the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state agency that oversees the oil and gas industry, had never released figures showing how much was being burned in the Eagle Ford.

Instead, the agency released only statewide figures showing the overall volume of flaring was low compared to overall production — about one percent.

Whenever a government agency touts rosy statistics, there’s probably a database behind those numbers. And if you obtain that raw data, you might be able to figure out what’s really going on.

Today’s Express-News story about flares burning 20 billion cubic feet of natural gas so far in 2014 is a good reminder of the value of public databases — and why journalists need to get their hands on them to analyze the records for themselves.

There’s no question analyzing data can be a lot of work. We filed an open records request with the Railroad Commission for a copy of the flaring data in the spring of 2013. It’s a huge database of monthly reports showing how much oil and gas is produced in Texas and where those hydrocarbons go. Flaring and venting are one of the “disposition” categories in the data.

I drove to the agency’s Austin headquarters with a flash drive that could handle the enormous database. It was a beast — more than 25 gigabytes of 85 million records. All that summer we used software to convert the Railroad Commission’s archaic data to CSV files, a format we could use in the newsroom. After that, it took weeks to crunch the numbers and uncover the hidden pitfalls.

Read more: Workers dying on the Eagle Ford Shale

Why go through the hassle? Why should frazzled journalists take the time to learn how to analyze data? Don’t we have enough to do?

The answers is, journalists need to know a lot of skills — how to interview people, how to write clearly, how to find information. Analyzing public data should be a part of that skill set. It opens doors to stories that couldn’t otherwise be told. This is what journalism is all about.

When we were finished reviewing the flaring data, our analysis showed that the volume of flared gas in Texas had increased by 400 percent since 2009. And most of that gas came from the Eagle Ford Shale near San Antonio. This chart essentially told the story of flaring in the shale that no one had figured out — not even state officials:

Quantifying the volume of flared gas opened up new questions and possibilities. When Projects Editor David Sheppard asked how much air pollution was created by all this flaring, we found out there was a way to calculate an estimate. We obtained emails from the state’s environmental agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, that showed how to estimate levels of air pollution created by gas flares. Those formulas were based on the volume of flared gas – which we had. So we plugged those numbers into Excel spreadsheets to come up with the amounts of sulfur, volatile organic compounds and other pollutants that came from flaring in the region.

In August, the Express-News published the results of our investigation, Up in Flames. The total volume of wasted gas in the shale from 2009 to 2012 was almost 39 billion cubic feet — enough to meet the annual heating and cooking needs for all 335,700 residential customers who relied on gas last year in CPS Energy’s service area, which includes San Antonio.

Sunday’s story is based on a fresh batch of flaring figures obtained by Express-News Data Editor Joseph Kokenge, who scraped the data directly from the Railroad Commission’s website.

The new numbers for 2013 and 2014 show that flares burned and wasted even more of the fossil fuel. In the first seven months of 2014, more than 20 billion cubic feet of gas went up in smoke — enough to fuel CPS Energy’s 800 megawatt Rio Nogales power plant during the same time frame.

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Whenever a real estate developer bulldozes majestic oaks or paves over environmentally sensitive land on the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, it’s usually because he has “vested rights.” He’s grandfathered from city codes, and he can do whatever he wants on a property.

But sometimes trees are cut down not because of vested rights, but because of flaws in the actual ordinance that was intended to protect trees from urban sprawl.

Here’s my latest story about a flaw I learned about recently in the city’s tree-preservation ordinance. We’ve also published stories here and here about other ways to get around city ordinances.

Related: How to research a property’s history using Bexar County’s free records search

The latest method of avoiding the tree ordinance involves a “homeowners exemption.” Lobbyist Ken Brown advised his client, Skinner Nurseries, that it didn’t have to follow city codes that required the company to preserve trees on its 19-acre property. That’s because the rural land had a house on it. The city’s tree ordinance sets no limits on the size of residential properties, so Skinner Nurseries could bulldoze all the trees it wanted — and it did.

Skinner Nurseries bulldozed the property for — of all things — a tree-nursery business. But a sour economy killed the project after the trees were cut down. No tree-nursery was ever built, and the old house was eventually torn down.

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The University of Texas at San Antonio established an archive of William and Fay Sinkin Papers, 1928-2008, located downtown at the Institute of Texas Cultures. The archives contain news clippings, brochures, studies, and other documents. There are certain rules you must follow to read these records but they’re open to everyone.

Reading Sinkin’s papers, it’s striking how long fights over the Edwards Aquifer have been raging. The Edwards Aquifer is fed by runoff from rain that filters through limestone on the city’s North Side. In the 1970s, real estate developers started eyeing that area to build new homes, parking lots, and streets — the kinds of things that taint runoff with pollutants.

Related: Get in touch with investigative reporter John Tedesco

Many of us remember the PGA Village — Jaime Castillo wrote a column about how Sinkin helped collect 100,000 signatures to turn in a petition opposing the proposed resort.

But not so many people remember how Sinkin had drummed up signatures decades earlier in a similar battle.

In 1975, real estate developer Sam Barshop sought a zoning change for a new “super mall” at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604. Sinkin showed up at City Hall with 47,000 signatures from people opposing the mall. Henry Cisneros supported the effort, at least initially, and the mall tore a rift in the San Antonio business community.

Many downtown business owners opposed the city’s northward growth. A Greater Chamber of Commerce committee headed by construction magnate H.B. Zachry was a major proponent of the mall and operated with a $50,000 war chest.

Barshop filed a lawsuit and Sinkin and others eventually lost the battle. The result is Northwoods Shopping Center.

Not many shoppers looking for deals at Marshalls are probably aware of the heated political battles that were fought over that piece of land.

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