Natural gas is often found with oil. The high pressure of natural gas is often what causes oil to gush from the ground in oil fields. If it occurs near a market, natural gas is often captured and used as a fossil fuel itself. But, when natural gas is produced distant from markets, or the price of natural gas is low, it is vented to the atmosphere and burned.
On space shuttle missions, astronauts have reported seeing natural gas flares in the Middle East when circling the Earth. Now, in the rush to extract oil, nearly a third of the natural gas produced in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale deposit is flared to the atmosphere.
Natural gas is predominantly methane, which is a powerful agent in climate change. Burning it converts methane to carbon dioxide, which has a significant, but lesser impact. From the point of view of climate change, flaring natural gas is better than venting it directly to the atmosphere unburned. But, what a waste of energy!
Flaring in North Dakota is so widespread, it’s starting to rival some of America’s biggest cities in light pollution. The energy lost is estimated to be equivalent to what it would take to heat 700,000 homes. And remember – there are only about 700,000 people living in the entire state of North Dakota.
Beyond the waste of energy, new studies find a substantial amount of methane is escaping, unburned, to the atmosphere.
It’s shameful to see fossil fuels wasted, and flaring natural gas is a blatant example.
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Picture: Look How Much Natural Gas Gets Flared At Oil Fields In North Carolina
Photo, taken on December 5, 2011, courtesy of Tim Hurst via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, with partial support from the Field Day Foundation.