Posted on 09/07/2007 5:16:50 PM PDT by lduucckkyy
Up to 170 billion cubic meters of natural gas are "flared" by the world's oil producers every year. The economic value amounts to $40 billion, but the burden on the earth's atmosphere -- in warming emissions like methane and carbon dioxide -- is enormous.
In spite of all the recent talk about climate change, the Kyoto Protocol and tight energy resources in Europe, the oil industry continues to burn huge volumes of natural gas that rises from oil deposits on land or under the sea. Over 20 countries have increased the practice of "flaring" in the last 12 years, and some burn far more gas on drilling platforms and in oil fields than they've admitted, officially, so far.
America's weather-data department, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), came to this conclusion in a new report based on American satellite data. The study was financed by the World Bank, which five years ago started a global initiative to change the long-established practice of flaring gas and to capture it for energy use instead.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
but then how would you sell the electricity from an oil platform?
Onshore, gas is most often flared off when it is associated with gas plants and refineries. The flare essentially serves the same purpose as a safety valve.
Offshore, so-called "associated" gas is flared off because there's no way to recover it without a completely separate pipeline system.
If governments get on this bandwagon, like the enviros would like, all it will accomplish is raising the price of gasoline for your car.
Of course, if refineries switch back to blowdown drums and another explodes killing several or dozens, they will be sued for not flaring.
maybe convert it into hydrogen somehow? Lots of seawater around
Some quick calculations show that the effect of this burnoff is to add about 20 parts per billion of combustion products per year to the atmosphere. Given what volcanoes do, I can’t get too worked up about this.
Usually they only flare for a few days to get an idea about how much gas the well will produce. most of the time the gas will be used to power the pump (if needed), if it is an oil well. But it would be impracticle to bring in a generator for a few days and sell electricity...
convert it to hydrogen and pump it into a blimp and float it back to the states
You've got an economical way to do it?
And an economical use for it?
Why in the world would the oil industry "burn off" $40 billion in profits if there was an economical way to recover it and a market for it which would allow them to profit?
Use the electricity to run the oil platform.
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