Enough natural gas to burn...

 

 

"If we have so much of this stuff, why in the Sam Hill does my heating bill keep going up?"

Wow! What a problem to have! Seems we have so much natural gas in this country that we just burn it off. In fact, this procedure (called flaring), has been around for many, many decades. At one time, natural gas was considered to be an externality of production, a waste product to be burned off. Today however, natural gas is a commodity. A valuable commodity we are finding more and more uses for.

The "greenies" are having a fit as flaring throws more hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. That plays into the whole global warming canard. The people working in the North Dakota Bakken Fields would welcome a bit more of "global warming" this time of year. Now the latest wrinkle is the oil drillers have agreed to further process the Bakken oil to make safer for transport on oil trains. It was been somewhat volatile as the Bakken oil has a high gas content. This can be reduced by further processing the oil prior to shipment. This processing extracts more of the gas. And where is this excess gas going to go. More flaring of course!

I have a simple mind so I don't understand some things. Why can't we put up additional natural gas processing facilities to capture this gas rather than flaring it? To me this is a win-win. More product to drive down prices, and less flaring. If we need more pipelines to deliver this gas to market, we should to build them. The Bakken Fields are going to produce oil for a long time, and to not capture this gas would be a fool's errand.

I have ranted about this before. A comprehensive energy plan would cover the big as well as the small items. Natural gas should be a BIG part of our energy future. It is cleaner and cheaper than other types of petro. Time to get going. We are on the grow. We have a lot of energy, not enough to waste by flaring.