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Page added on January 11, 2013
Look How Much Natural Gas Gets Flared At Oil Fields In North Dakota
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.
7 Comments on "Look How Much Natural Gas Gets Flared At Oil Fields In North Dakota"
BillT on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 3:20 am
Bakken is the joke of the century. So much hype. so much hope. So little reality. Bubbles come and go. The flared gas is just one example of the thoughtless rush to tap a bubble and not prepare the infrastructure needed to use all of the resources. I wonder how much that flared gas would have been worth in 10 years? Billions?
Kenz300 on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 3:19 pm
Gas flaring should be against the law…..
What a waste of energy and money.
econ101 on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 4:54 pm
Gas flaring is the result of peak oil politics, green enviro nuts and others helping this toxic political coalition. That gas would all be used if environuts hadnt stopped the building of the Big Stone 2 power plant in South Dakota. The toxic coalition is also there to stop any infractructure they can. Put the blame where it belongs, we are flaring because of anti energy, peak oil politics. There are laws and they do force waste.
This gas represents lost revenues to the mineral owners. Do you think they would flare it off if they could use it?
econ101 on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 5:00 pm
The Bakken oil production is going to be with us for generations. We are only now begining to realize just how much is actually there and where it all is both vertically and horizontally. Go stand out on the prairies of North Dakota and turn a circle 360 degrees. Imagine a 4 story payzone of oil and gas under all of that. Then realize you cant even see to the boundries.
Newfie on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 7:46 pm
econ101, yeah, sure, and it’s going to last forever, until the sun burns out.
Rick on Fri, 11th Jan 2013 8:45 pm
Flaring, what a waste of resources.
Econ101 on Sat, 12th Jan 2013 5:26 pm
If Newfie is right than maybe what the enviro nuts and peak oil crackpots need to do is pass a law that prevents us from developing or using any energy source that can’t be proven to be infinite.
It’s hard to understand big numbers but there is so much oil and gas just in the Bakken it is virtually unlimited.
Waste of the natural gas in North Dakota is a direct result of enviro nuts making everyone’s life more expensive and more difficult to live in their righteous, but wholly unfounded contempt for what they don’t understand. I have read that about 30% of the gas is flared. At the same time many people don’t want this gas liquefied and exported yet the enviro nuts have seen to it that much will be wasted instead of used. The real irony is the gas is being burned anyway, for no gain. So the enviro nuts are really working against themselves.