Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
Posted on 08/25/2014 3:41:20 PM PDT by Lorianne
From his driveway, Tom Wheeler's view of North Dakota's sprawling grasslands seems endless. Fields of soy, wheat and canola stretch to the horizon in all directions. But as drillers flock to the state to cash in on North Dakota's booming shale play, that horizon has become increasingly marked by natural gas flares.
Flaring is the burning of natural gas that can't be processed or sold.
All those flares, meanwhile, are adding up. They burn so brightly that NASA astronauts have taken pictures of their glow from space.
For some landowners like Wheeler, it's not the noise or light pollution that gets to them. It's the region's wasted natural resource.
In Ray, Hess has a gas compression station bordering Wheeler's property. Natural gas is pumped from several surrounding oil wells, before being transported to a larger processing facility in Tioga. A four-burner flare sounds like a jet engine, and the 20-foot flame, sitting atop the 30-foot torch, can be seen for miles.
"It's not just a waste to the landowner or the tax collector, it's a waste of the land's natural product," Wheeler said. "When I was growing up, we were taught not to waste anything."
Every day, drillers in the Bakken burn off about 350 million cubic feet of natural gas. That comes to more than $100 million worth of gas burned off each month—a figure that makes the state's mineral rights holders' unhappy. There are at least 12 class-action law suits filed against the drillers by mineral rights holders seeking lost revenue.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
Why not compress, liquify and contain it for use later? Maybe use it to power the local equipment?
Second law of thermodynamics: At least make an attempt to use lost heat.
The title is completely misleading as the content has nothing to do with fracking. Instead it’s the flaring of what here in New Mexico is called “casing head” gas, co-produced with the oil but unable to be captured as pipeline infrastructure has not yet caught up with the drilling and oil production.
I have to agree with the farmer’s views - it should not be wasted but if flaring is not allowed, the wells must be shut in which also prevents revenue from the oil stream. Obviously the solution is more infrastructure or, as the article discusses, new technology for storage as CNG and use to power the drilling rigs and other equipment.
‘There are at least 12 class-action law suits filed against the drillers by mineral rights holders seeking lost revenue.’
I just watched “Fracknation”. A must see for all!!!
Class Action lawsuits are the classic weapon of the anti-fracking groups
The “problem”: more natural gas than they know what to do with.
They’ll figure it out.
Pipeline infrastructure would diminish railroad profits.
Buffett won't be pleased...
I always wondered why this gas could not be burned i a gas turbine genset to backfeed power to the grid... package mini generating plants that can be dropped off the back of a rollback.
I did some RR work in NM and the flare in Eunice was right next to the yard... impressive... further south I think before coming down the hill into Jal,, there was the gas plant on the east side of Highway 18... That flare was MASSIVE.
Someone is building portable compressor units. Still not enough pipelines out are a likely problem.
Railroads aren't in the business of transporting natural gas. It would first have to be compressed or liquefied to be handled in an insulated and reinforced tank car -- creating what amounts to a rolling bomb.
Consequently, Warren Buffet has no interest in whether there is a pipeline infrastructure to handle the resource.
Pipelines can handle liquids, too.
Fields of poison, poison, and poison stretch to the horizon in all directions.
But not the same pipeline.
There are separate pipeline networks for crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products. Each are also built to different engineering standards, as well.
Thus, the railroad magnate, Buffet, theoretically cares about pipelines which might take Bakken crude to market, but doesn't give a damn about natural gas pipelines.
The worst situation for gas flaring exists on Federal land where some 40% of the natural gas produced as a byproduct of oil production is flared. That percentage is under 30% on private leases, and has generally been decreasing as wells are tied into gathering networks and new gas processing infrastructure is built.
The Hess plant near Tioga just underwent a massive expansion, and that capacity is already taken up.
Then, too, there is the matter of getting the gas to market.
These are infrastructure problems, and the flares at gas plants may look like waste, but the alternative is to flare excess gas at the wellsite.
Infrastructure is expanding to fill the need, but there is a time lag, and during that lag, gas is flared.
Keep in mind that the objective here is the oil production and the gas is a byproduct. For a well producing 1000 BOPD and 1000MCF, the gas is worth only a few percent of the value of the oil.
FOr people who want real numbers, I suggest reading 'The Director's Cut' at the NDIC website link
Yes, there are usually separate systems for liquids and gas. However, switching from one to the other has been done, after infrastructure changes and inspection.
Liquids can be transported by rail. Gas cannot. So rail operators DO NOT want to see pipelines in ANY form invade their monopoly. Once a pipeline right-of-way is secured and cleared, it isn’t too much more work to install TWO parallel lines, one for liquids and another for gas.
Glad I am not the only one that noticed.
I really love the headline’s use of the words “fracking” and “problem” because the article has nothing to do with fracking at all, and in fact there are no fracking problems either.
BUT, and this is a big BUT, those words are absolutely perfect for maintaining the Democrat propaganda machine’s latest irrational attacks on fracking. Irrational or not, though, since Democrats always MUST have some anti-science object to focus the attention of their strident and ignorant subjects upon, fracking is the perfect distraction from the failure of global warming, both the reality of its having failed to occur and its failure as a tactic to frighten voters.
Only if the pipeline goes the same places the trains do...and...the railroads aren't hauling raw wellhead gas anywhere, only processed fractions like ethane, propane, and butane.
Those fractions have to be separated from the raw gas, along with water, CO2, H2S (where present), and heavier hydrocarbon fractions.
The Methane (smallest of the hydrocarbon 'chains') is the Natural Gas people get when they turn on their gas stove.
Without that processing, there is little way to control the BTU output of any device, which makes using unprocessed gas difficult.
Gathering and processing infrastructure are under construction in the region, and existing processing facilities are being expanded, but to tie those expansions in requires plants be shut down for the tie-in, which means an increase in flaring in the short term before that infrastructure goes on line.
This is the last best gasp of the anti-oil people out there to attack the industry. They have tried attacking fracking, attacking visual impact, pipeline construction, rail transport, and now, flaring of gas.
If the industry is losing money by doing something one way, there is incentive enough to change the way it is done. Infrastructure development is beginning to catch up.
In the meantime, oil leases are perishable items. Either they are held by production or the clock is ticking, and at between 3 to 5 million dollars for the rights to drill and produce oil on an 1280 acre spacing, the wells will be drilled.
One more thing. Well pad setups with multiple wells drilled from the same location have cut down on infrastructure complexity, and the layout of wells is such that it simplifies that gathering system. Even so, every two miles, in general there will be another gathering pipeline going east/west in the area in McKenzie County I am working in, and there is a lot of pipe to lay, not counting the processing facilities and compressor stations needed.
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