Posted on 04/09/2012 12:34:17 PM PDT by thackney
The number natural gas flaring permits issued in Texas has more than quadrupled over the past two years, as oil and gas production in the state has boomed, according to the Texas Railroad Commission.
The state commission issued 651 permits last year, compared to 306 in 2010. In 2009, 158 permits were handed out.
Companies flare, or burn off, natural gas produced from their wells if low prices make the fossil fuel uneconomical to sell or if there’s not enough pipeline capacity to get to it market. Flaring also occurs to relieve dangerous pressure levels in wells and for other safety reasons.
The rapid increase in gas flaring is even more pronounced in North Dakota, where more than one-third of the fossil fuel is going up in smoke, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A group of institutional investors recently released a letter to 21 oil and gas companies decrying the rise of flaring because of the environmental and financial impacts. The group specifically called out Texas and North Dakota for the problem.
“We are concerned that flaring of natural gas wastes a valuable product,” the letter reads. “Even at today’s depressed wellhead price, the 100 million cubic feet of natural gas that were flared each day in North Dakota last year represents approximately $110 million in lost revenue.”
The letter, which was sent to leaders of Anadarko, Apache, ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, Chesapeake Energy, Noble Energy and other major producers, pointed to the proliferation of shale oil production as a key driver for flaring’s growth.
Ramona Nye, spokeswoman for the Texas Railroad Commission, says most of the flared gas in Texas comes from oil wells, where it is produced as a byproduct. While natural gas production has slowed because of its low price, oil drilling has boomed in Texas and across the country in recent years.
The problem with trying to scale down these processes that are outlined in the diagram a few posts up is that those processes require significant power to produce the compression of the gas prior to those illustrated processes. There is really no way to scale down the large engines that have the torque to drive the compressors thru multiple stages that produce the required pressures and temperatures. The size of the plants mean there are certain economies that have to be achieved in volume, capacity, and time.
I wonder then what the crossover point is....where flaring becomes more expensive then coming up with a small scale method of cleaning and utilizing the gas at the well head.
Could flare gas provide enough electricity to power the well head operations?
Don’t the unwanted products create problems for well pumping units and compressers that have been running on wellhead gas for years?
A low speed reciprocating engine engine can handle a lot of undesirables comparatively easy to some of the proposed processes or high-speed microturbine.
You can buy a engine that will run on straight crude oil (if it is light enough). We evaluated some of these for a remote facility needing a 30 MW power plant. In the end it was cheaper to build a basic topping plant, make our own diesel and have more efficient engines.
I understand - I was raised around the oil fields of southern KS and northern OK. Dad worked for Texaco from just out of high school before WW2, went to the service and went back to Texaco in 1948, staying to his death in the 70s. I have a few pictures like that stashed away, too.
Too many variables to answer that. In some cases yes, others no.
What is the gas/oil ratio? What is the field pressure? If it is deep an low pressure it is going to take pumping horsepower to lift it out of the ground. Some fields just need an open valve and they flow on their own.
On the Alaskan North slope, they power nearly everything with the natural gas taken off the field while still re-injecting left over gas in many fields. Prudhoe Bay has an abundance of Gas and still lots of pressure left; next door at Kuparuk they are running low on gas and are preparing to pipe it over from Prudhoe.
Can't and shouldn't are not the same thing. If you have oil history back to the 20's, you've seen plenty of companies fold up and go away while others stayed around and made money.
First you need to understand they do not want to flare it but there's times you have to. When developing a field it takes allot of infrastructure, flow lines, gas lines to your meters, then the main lines and booster stations. Sometimes it's necessary to flare until these are in place. Plus to get maximum oil production I need to get the pressure down. I can set tanks and truck out the oil but the NG has to go into a pipeline and until that equipment is in place I'll need to flare.
“Can you explain more what you are looking for?
You talk about a process for production and for locational concentration of deposits?
Oil and gas are always sourced to sedimentary basins. Does that help?”
Processing facilities are being built, but you have to have some placce to go with the product.
That Obama fellow is going to pat himself on the back over the extra pipeline capacity, too, right?
Bakken/Three forks production is aimed at producing oil, for those who just tuned in, and the gas is a byproduct of that production.
While the state may only look 'that big' on the map, the wells are on two section (two square mile) spacings, and it'd take a lot of pipe to connect them in, even where multiwell pads and smart siting would reduce the number of lines needed.
It is only theoretical to those that wish for a magic method of earth pumping out oil without regard to the laws of physics. Those that actually have to produce oil & gas for a living instead of just talk about it usually understand. We don't just drill anywhere and hope; there is plenty of sciences in searching for petroleum.
How detailed do you want to go?
This?
http://www.eia.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=oil_home-basics
Or this?
http://www.petroleumgeology.org/sedstrat.cfm
Do you understand how sedimentary rock is formed and why it is different from igneous rock? This is a very basic part of understanding the formation of petroleum fields.
Thac, just wondering, unless the well is also producing sellable quantities of liquids, why not just valve it in until the NG is marketable? If I held the Royalties, I’d be giving Producer a dirty look unless I was getting a check for what went past the wellhead.
I would have thought the only reasonable reason for flaring is during initial well cleanout and flow capacity metering.
“Do you understand how sedimentary rock is formed and why it is different from igneous rock?”
I had a graduate level course in historical geology (although I was an undergrad at the time) from Prof Loudon, U. of Wis.-Madison, and a course in glacial geology (same institution), and hold a doctorate in soil science.
But I do not know how petroleum is formed, and do not know whether anyone does, there not having been any witnesses to the phenomenon in action, but surely the inquiring mind of curious man has conjured theories as to how this might have occurred, and written books and learned essays about their conclusions.
No one here knows? Very well, there’s always Google.
For $2.08 per 1000 cubic ft., they will sell you as much as you want right now.
We currently have an overabundance of natural gas because of the mild winter in the East and all of the new shale gas wells coming on line. At current rates, all storage facilities will be filled to the brim by October and the companies that were drilling the shale gas wells are moving their equipment to drill shale oil wells where they can get $100 per barrel.
These are all good things, BTW.
Enjoy it. Natural Gas prices have never been lower.
That is the point. These are not drilled for gas wells. These are oil wells that produces some gas.
Thanks. I've had some of these type conversations on FR with people that argued that the depth alone proved it wasn't laid down by material from the surface.
We know we can produce oil directly from algae. When algae is trapped in sediment along with diatoms, plankton, etc, it doesn't have the oxygen source to decompose. Heat and pressure and a lot of time takes other more complex organic molecules like amino acids into crude oil. Keep in mind that crude oil is not a couple molecular structures but a vast array of hydrocarbons varying greatly from field to field and quite a mixture within each field.
The most common organic-rich sedimentary rock is black shale, deposited on an ancient ocean bottom. Temperature is the most important factor in turning organic matter into oil. The min temp for the formation of oil (~150°F) occurs typically at 7,000 ft. Oil is generated from that point down to about 300°F. If the source rock is deeper where temperatures exceed 300°F the breakdown will continue into the smaller, less complex hydrocarbons of natural gas.
As you have an understanding of geology, I would recommend the following book:
Thanks, I knew there had to be some logic to it. Now days the Oil Patch isn’t so big on wasteful actions.
Would still seem through sealed field gathering pipelines, it would be possible to run both oil and gas to some collective separator where gas could also be sold.
How about Toledo Bend!
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