Increase in "Flaring" Tied to Pipeline Shortages
With oil production on the rise in Texas, drilling companies are increasingly burning off the natural gas that surfaces with the oil because they can't get pipelines in place fast enough to transport it.
“There’s just more demand for pipelines than they can currently keep up with,” said James Mann, a lawyer who represents pipeline companies.
But the process — called "flaring" — is raising concerns among environmentalists, who say it releases nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide and other emissions with public health risks into the atmosphere.
“There is clearly a cause for concern with the sheer magnitude of flaring that ...
Comments (8)
Mike Openshaw via Texas Tribune on Facebook
And what is one of the delaying factors in pipeline construction? Those very same Environmental agencies.
Merryl Redding via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I always thought burning off the gas was a waste.....
David Spratt
As a fuel for auto and trucks this would be an abundant and cheap fuel. Now there is limited use for nat gas . Instead of electric cars more effort should be made to incorporate this fuel source into the existing supply chain. This fuel actually works and we have 100's of years worth of it.
Sonora Hartley via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Trying to figure out what to do? How about take the money and move where the air and water aren't as polluted? A land owner down that way is praying for an oil company to come to their door. When I asked about the potential for their wells to be polluted she said that with enough money they could buy water and have it trucked in. As for their neighbors, a ruined water well would be their problem. Some years back there was a uranium mine down there. Many people were happy to work there and take home a paycheck. When the mine closed all of a sudden these same workers and area residents said the mine had caused health problems and they wanted compensation! These people are unbelievably greedy and will do anything and sacrifice everything for money. And you watch - someday they or their heirs will sue these companies for billions.
gypsy314 ne
Democrats at work!
Anyone but Obama the fraud and his liar democrat friends!
Jim Vance
Give it a rest, gypsy -- you're nothing but a doofus troll and your schtick is quite thin on any intelligent content whatsoever.
Flaring is perhaps the simplest and certainly least expensive method of rushing an oil well into production, simply because the gas produced simultaneously with the crude oil can't be utilized directly in vehicles or placed straight into delivery pipelines for consumption by industrial or residential users because of the small fractions of very undesirable and potentially quite dangerous gas compounds it contains. Those must be removed or cleaned from the raw gas during separation (which also yields butane, propane, heptane etc.) in a processing plant before delivery to the ultimate users (with the telltale warning smell added). The wellhead flaring process consumes most of those dangerous compounds but does produce some noxious byproducts as noted, plus lots of increasingly undesirable CO2 -- sort of a double-whammy waste product. Even though the Permian Basin's geology is well-known and reasonably well-proven at this point, the gas/oil yield from any given new well location isn't known until after the well "comes in" and you can actually see how much of what types of products come out, but figuring out how to provide temporary pipelines laid on the ground surface to some temporary compressed collection tank until the buried permanent replacements can be constructed ought to be something the Railroad Commission and industry should work toward.
think
Texas is the pollution capital of the US. When Texas gets flared up to smithereens or explodes like the Atomic Bomb went off in the state people can't cry because they keep re electing career politicians who are worse than used car salesmen. Texas has had politicians selling out to profiteering pollutors and and stack agencies with crony industry mobsters for too long. The only thing Texas has to show for the last few decades are obscene profits for robber barrons and political cronies and the public looses.
allen gilmer
The real issue is that the success of producers at unlocking the potential of unconventional hydrocarbons has allowed the US to become the "Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas". Given that natural gas, unlike oil, is traded and priced on a local market basis rather than on a global commodity basis, coupled with no export infrastructure, and Federal laws that effectively outlaw export except for specifically defined groups that have or will have a Federal monopoly pass on that endeavor, we have extremely low gas prices compared to oil prices. Having a well shut in for a long period of time damages the ability of that well to flow back hydrocarbons. The combination of all of this is flaring until some market can be accessed. And natural gas is selling at historical lows EVEN AFTER the east coast has switched over its electric plant fuel to natural gas from coal... adding 4 billion cubic feet of gas per day to consumption. Texas hasn't imported a trainload of Wyoming coal in over 6 months. Where is the celebration of coal to gas switching from our environmental brethren? This is the biggest deal from a C)2 perspective since.... forever!