Much Of North Dakota's Natural Gas Is Going Up In Flames

[marmar]

(NPR) North Dakota's oil boom isn't just about oil; a lot of natural gas comes out of the ground at the same time. But there's a problem with that: The state doesn't have the pipelines needed to transport all of that gas to market. There's also no place to store it.

In many cases, drillers are simply burning it.

"People are estimating it's about $1 million a day just being thrown into the air," says Marcus Stewart, an energy analyst with Bentek Energy. Stewart tracks the amount of gas burned off — or flared — in the state, and his latest figures show that drillers are burning about 27 percent of the gas they produce.

While that percentage has been declining, Stewart says the overall amount of wasted gas is still rising as more oil wells are drilled. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/30/265396179/much-of-north-dakota-s-natural-gas-is-going-up-in-flames

[Paladin]

1. Sorry, but it's a little late to get outraged about flared gas.

The practice has been going on for decades now, maybe a full century. Gas pipelines cost big money and take a lot of time to construct, and the economics of the natural gas market haven't been much of an incentive in recent years. I'm not pimping for the energy tycoons, here; just stating facts.....

[badtoworse]

3. Not to mention that the people screaming about the flaring would be screaming about new pipelines

[Coyotl]

2. The figure I've heard is over 1/3 of Bakken Field gas is well-head burned into the atmosphere

so they can make a quick profit from the oil w/o paying for infrastructure for the gas.

[Coyotl]

4. "360 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere . equal to the exhaust of 70 million cars"

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2012/0713/Thanks-to-North-Dakota-US-waste-of-natural-gas-grows-rapidly

Thanks to North Dakota, US waste of natural gas grows rapidly
Mark Clayton, Staff writer / July 13, 2012

The United States is flaring so much natural gas into the atmosphere - burning it as oil-field waste rather than extracting energy from it in power plants - that it now leads the world in the growth rate at which it is trashing that energy source.

Evidence of the trend can be seen flickering in the night across western North Dakota, where new oil drilling in the Bakken shale formation there has helped propel a surge in US flaring since 2007. As is often the case, many companies find it cheaper to burn off gas that emerges in new oil fields, rather than build pipelines and facilities to collect it.

But that common practice has created a big problem globally. About 5 trillion cubic feet (b.c.f.) of natural gas were flared or vented without burning worldwide last year. That huge amount of wasted energy is roughly equal to a quarter of all natural gas consumed in the US annually, the World Bank reports. Flaring also dumped 360 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the same period, equal to the exhaust of 70 million cars.

..........

[xchrom]

5. du rec.