Boosted by the fracking boom that has opened up fossil fuel reserves trapped under the Bakken Shale, North Dakota is now the second-largest oil producing state in America. But the state has a dirty little secret: drilling companies are wasting a lot of natural gas to get to that oil.
How much natural gas is getting wasted in North Dakota? Producers are flaring roughly one third of gas reserves in the state — enough natural gas each day to heat half a million homes. The flaring is so widespread, North Dakota is starting to rival some of America’s biggest cities in light pollution. Check it out:
The image comes from the sustainable investment group Ceres. According to the organization, one of its investors, Mercy Investment Services, has filed a shareholder resolution with the large oil developer Continental Resources to encourage adoption of policies that limit flaring.
According to the World Bank, the oil boom in North Dakota has made the U.S. one of the top-10 gas flaring countries in the world.
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On the bright side at least they are burning it. How much worse would it be if they just released the methane!
Why is it so hard to actually capture it? They are literally burning profits away.
So much for the profit motive…
and
Methane naturally degrades partly into CO2 in the atmosphere, so they are just speeding up the process, skipping some of the CH4 phase, still awful for the climate.
(Sorry!)
It’s called pipelines and right of ways. You first need a right of way from the land owner to build a pipeline from the well site the a gathering system.
They flare it because North Dakota is 500 miles from nowhere, and NG is selling for $3.00/MMBtu, while oil is at $15.00/MMBtu. There is no gas pipeline infrastructure to speak of in the Bakken. Pipelines are very expensive to build, and building a 500-miler to a population who could actually burn it, say, Minneapolis, would cost way more than they’d recoup.
It is much better that they flare it than let it go to atmosphere as methane–although in the rush to get the oil drilled, I have little doubt some significant methane is slipping away. I’m pretty sure regulations in ND require flaring.
If regulations required capture, that would make the oil more expensive to lift. People would also argue that piping the gas would (1) add to the gas glut and put more pressure on the notion of exporting NG from this country and (2) retard domestic oil production.
Why can’t they use it locally?
That’s ‘Carmnism’, buddy!
This may help …https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/newsletter/winter09/PDF/So%20why_gas%20flares.pdf
Yes, but none of it is being included in the Bakken oil’s GHG emissions.
Wow. The picture is scary/impressive.
Ceres produced the graphic. But the image is just the recently released high resolution light pollution map from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/earth-at-night.html
Zoom in on the full-sized map – it’s beautiful.
Couldn’t they use the natural gas to run generators to supply the drill sites and local areas with electric power?
No doubt they have to flare it as there is no profitable way to get it to market. Not that that in any way reduces the massive global warming input that all this flaring produces.
One can simply look at this and take it in as more evidence of the suicide pact that the fossil fuel industry, American government entities at all levels and the American people themselves have entered into.
This suicide pact says to the fossil fuel industry “You provide the energy to keep business as usual going, we will look the other way, and government says We will not stand in your way or regulate you, in the name of economic growth and business as usual we will accept the consequences of global warming and extreme weather events.”
The path forward seems cast in stone, no amount of scientific proofs and no amount of extreme weather evidence can be allowed to stand in the way of a fossil fuel based economy that demands exponential growth to survive. The modern model of capitalism is rigid and dogmatic, incapable of responding to changed circumstances. We are prepared to destroy the earth’s climate stability in the name of suburban living, freeway driving, and ever more Iphone and Ipads.
People care more about loading their kids up with I gadgets and their first cars at 16 than they do about presenting their kids with a sustainable and liveable planet.
We now know why so many civilizations have crashed, they get in a self serving rut and find it impossible, due to vested interests, to adapt to change.
For all the evidence of run away global warming, the earth’s governments and business communities have vowed and sworn to maintain the present fossil fuel model till total ruin rains down upon us. As I said “It is a suicide pact!”
I think that ‘genocide pact’ sums it up better.
brilliant
The EIA states that in 2011 America consumed in commercial buildings, industry and at the power plants approx. 17.5 Trillion cu.ft. of natural gas. Each building and each natural gas appliance has a chimney. Guess what is leaving all those chimneys all across the country? HOT exhaust, you just can’t see it.
Flaring waste natural gas should be stopped and commercial buildings should be encouraged to consume their natural gas more efficiently.
The residential market has high efficiency condensing boilers and condensing water heaters.
Industry and the power plants consume the same natural gas. With the technology of Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery they can be operating just as efficiently. Over 90% energy efficient and venting COOL exhaust.
Reduced global warming and reduced CO2 emissions in big numbers.
Another good argument for a carbon tax.
liquify and ship to market not that tough, build local processing plant, gather, process ans ship by rail, not that expensive. even nigeria doesn’t flare anymore!!!