ND burns off natural gas due to lack of pipelines

BISMARCK, N.D. — Enough natural gas to heat every home in North Dakota through at least two brutal winters was burned off as an unmarketable byproduct in the state’s oil patch in 2008, records obtained by The Associated Press show.

North Dakota produced a record 62.8 million barrels of oil last year, up nearly 18 million barrels from 2007. Natural gas, a byproduct of oil production, was pegged at 86 billion cubic feet – of which 26 billion cubic feet was “flared” because of the lack of collecting systems and pipelines needed to move it to market, said Lynn Helms, director of the state Department of Mineral Resources.

“Although natural gas creates much less revenue than oil, there is still a lot of value there,” Helms said. “We don’t want to see it go up in smoke.”

Helms said “tens of millions of dollars” of natural gas pipelines are being planned for North Dakota, and capacity is being increased at three of the nine processing plants in the state. But it may take up to three years for the infrastructure to be built to process and ship natural gas from wells where it’s now being flared, he said.

Flaring natural gas also creates carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.

AP