This has got to be the biggest waste ever

[sduyck_2000 (imported)]

http://www.tcetoday.com/latest news/2011/november/almost 30 of north dakota gas flared.aspx (http://www.tcetoday.com/latest%20news/2 ... 20flared.a spx)

I dont see how in this economy we cant put people to work capping and piping this gas.

I also dont understand why the climate change people are not all over this...how about natural gas cars in north Dakota or a fertilizer plant.

Text:

NEARLY 30% of the natural gas produced in the US state of North Dakota is being flared off, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The upswing in flaring – burning off natural gas as soon as it’s produced – has been fuelled by a massive rise in oil production in the Bakkan shale formation, which spans an area of about 47,000 km2 in the northwest of the state. Since 2007, the amount of natural gas produced in North Dakota has seen a 20-fold increase, and pipeline capacity and processing facilities simply haven’t been able to keep up.

“The percentage of flared gas in North Dakota is considerably higher than the national average,” said a spokesperson for the EIA. “In 2009, less than 1% of natural gas produced in the United States was vented or flared.”

As wasteful as the idea of flaring what amounts to roughly 170m ft3 of gas per day may seem, companies actually adopt the practice in order to save money. Constructing pipelines and arranging processing can be expensive, and in many cases a producer would stand to lose more money from trying to sell the gas than simply setting fire to it. The situation in the US hasn’t been helped by a heavily depressed natural gas market, thanks to the recent shale gas boom.

As well as flaring, the EIA reported that a further 7% of gas produced is either lost during transport or used as fuel by the operators themselves.

Jack Dalrymple, the state governor, said that the oil and gas industry plans to invest more than US$3b on infrastructure and processing by 2013.

“As this investment is made and gas gathering infrastructure is built, policy can be expected to focus even more toward preventing waste in the natural gas arena,” he continued. “By year end 2012, natural gas processing capacity is expected to increase 389% from 2006.”

[A-1 (imported)]

http://www.tcetoday.com/latest%20news/2 ... 20flared.a spx

I don't see how in this economy we cant put people to work capping and piping this gas.

I also don't understand why the climate change people are not all over this...how about natural gas cars in north Dakota or a fertilizer plant.

Of course you don't see the sense in this... that is because there IS NONE, unless you are a BIG OIL baron and you want to make money selling oil...

Ever heard of T. Boone Pickens? I suggest that you GOOGLE his name and read some of what he has to say...

If, however, you want the SHORT VERSION... CLICK HERE, (http://schirachreport.com/index.php/201 ... tural-gas/) don't trash Obama and be prepared to stop watching the U.S. News media (Fox and MSNBC) and look to UNBIASED sources for your news...

Also, to supplement this short version, CLICK HERE ALSO, (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 28836.html) and be prepared for the range war brewing between those who like yourself are possessed of Common Sense and the OIL exploiting PROFITEERS that were and are DUBYA's buddies and are HEAVILY supported by Fox news (propaganda) and its flock of lying sons-of-bitching commentators that even NOOT GINGRINCH recently dissed as not knowing what they are talking about...

For your convenience I am posting the last article, it is too good not to be looked over by everybody...

Big Dogs of the Oil Patch Tangle Over Gas Subsidies

By JEFFREY BALL

Investor T. Boone Pickens has a vision of American highways in which trucks are powered by natural gas—and nudged along by government subsidies. Charles Koch, one of the richest men in the country, is gunning hard to block taxpayer money from boosting his fellow billionaire's dream.

The oil-patch titans are brawling over a congressional bill that would provide tax breaks to trucking companies for 18-wheelers that run on natural gas instead of oil.

T. Boone Pickens is backing subsidies for trucks that use natural gas.

Mr. Pickens, a limelight-loving, veteran energy investor who owns part of a company that installs natural-gas fueling stations, has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting an energy plan he says would help shift the U.S. off imported oil. Mr. Koch, an intensely private but prominent donor to conservative causes, opposes the bill. His family conglomerate, Koch Industries Inc., refines oil into motor fuel, including diesel for trucks, and uses natural gas to make chemicals. He says the bill would unfairly enrich the gas industry.

The Pickens-Koch spat is playing out in Washington policy circles, but it is a clash between two outsized business personalities, said Rep. John Sullivan, the Oklahoma Republican who is a main sponsor of the subsidy bill. "They're two bulls in a field," Mr. Sullivan said of the men, both of whom he knows.

Oil billionaires T. Boone Pickens and Charles Koch are brawling over a congressional bill that would provide tax breaks to trucking companies for 18-wheelers that run on natural gas instead of oil. Jeffrey Ball has details.

A Koch Industries spokesman said Mr. Koch wouldn't comment for this article. But, in an interview Tuesday, Richard Fink, a Koch Industries executive vice president, said: "We just think it's a fundamental mistake for the government to be picking winners and losers in this way. While we respect Boone, we disagree with him on a very fundamental level."

A spokesman for Dallas-based Mr. Pickens said Mr. Koch and his company have a financial interest in opposing the natural-gas bill. "They have to bet against the plan," said the spokesman, Jay Rosser. "They import and refine $2 billion of OPEC oil every year" at Koch Industries' refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex., he said, a figure he attributed to government figures compiled by Mr. Pickens' staff.

"Frankly, it's good to know who the opposition is," said Mr. Rosser, who himself worked for Koch Industries before working for Mr. Pickens. "What we're seeing is the same old special interests step forward who have blocked our efforts to get off OPEC oil for 40 years."

Mr. Fink, the Koch executive, said he didn't know the dollar value of OPEC oil the Corpus Christi refinery processes. "Even if we weren't in the business, we would be opposing subsidies," he said. "They both know that," he added, referring to Messrs. Pickens and Rosser.

With the nation awash in domestic natural gas following recent huge discoveries, the political row between Messrs. Pickens and Koch reflects a broader fight between the natural-gas industry and gas consumers over how best to use the fuel.

The natural-gas industry sees trucks as a potentially big new market—and the subsidies as a way to jump-start that market.

That is because trucking companies say an 18-wheeler tractor configured to burn natural gas can cost about $200,000, roughly twice as much as a diesel version. And the trucks need special natural-gas fueling stations. The bill at the center of the tussle would provide tax breaks of up to $64,000 per natural-gas truck to transport companies and up to $100,000 per fueling station for owners of the stations. The tax breaks would end after five years.

As of Tuesday, 185 House lawmakers, including 104 Democrats and 81 Republicans, were sponsoring the bill. A bill that would have provided tax breaks over a longer period—and cost more money—died without a vote in Congress last year. Even backers of the bill say that, with government coffers strained, approving such breaks face an uphill slog.

Large industrial users of natural gas, particularly chemical makers, don't like the bill. They fear it will boost demand for natural gas, raising the prices they have to pay for the fuel. Those companies say that, with oil prices high and natural-gas prices low, natural-gas vehicles should compete without the need for tax breaks.

In the current fight, Messrs. Pickens and Koch both present themselves as defenders of U.S. fiscal restraint. They cut very different profiles.

Mr. Pickens an Oklahoma native living in Dallas, says he has spent some $80 million the past few years touting policies to curb U.S. dependence on imported oil. He spends much of his time flying around the country delivering speeches touting the bill, a main plank in a broader energy platform he calls the Pickens Plan. On his website, he offers frequent updates, dubbed The Daily Pickens, to his supporters, whom he calls the Pickens Army."I think we're stupid doing what we're doing," he said in an April interview, referring to vehicles burning imported oil instead of domestic natural gas.

Mr. Koch, chief executive of privately held Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kan., seldom speaks in public. He has long been a major contributor to free-market think tanks. The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group, said Koch Industries was the oil-and-gas industry's top giver to federal candidates, parties and so-called outside groups, spending $1.9 million in 2009 and 2010. Lately, however, he has amped up his voice, penning several op-ed pieces. In an opinion piece last Thursday in the Wichita Eagle, he wrote that energy subsidies like those in the natural-gas bill distort free markets. Without naming Mr. Pickens directly, he criticized the "misguided suggestion that the natural-gas industry should receive enormous new subsidies," adding that the subsidies "are promoted, in large part, by those seeking to profit politically, rather than by competing in a market where consumers vote with their wallets."

On Monday, several conservative groups, some of which have received donations from Mr. Koch, issued a letter warning members of Congress that sponsoring the bill would be "a sign that you have not heard the message and are not serious about eliminating expensive, counter-productive energy subsidies." Tax breaks like those in the bill "give advantages to the politically well connected," it said.

Messrs. Koch and Pickens have known each other for years. In 2007, Mr. Pickens spoke in Palm Springs, Calif., to a meeting of business leaders run by Mr. Koch. The subject: philanthropy.

Mr. Pickens and his family own 41% of Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a company that installs natural-gas fueling stations for cars and trucks. He said he supports the bill not because of that investment but because he wants the U.S. to "get off of oil from the enemy."

As the war of words has heated up, critics of Mr. Koch have pointed out that Koch Industries receives federal energy subsidies—for blending ethanol into gasoline in its refineries. Mr. Koch, in a March op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, addressed that criticism. His company opposes ethanol subsidies as a matter of policy, he said, but it accepts the taxpayer money because it's "essentially obligated" by federal policy to use the alternative fuel.

[Paolo]

Supply and demand.

If there was ample supply, gas would be dirty cheap, and the Fat Cats can't have that - so they waste it to keep prices up.

[Sweetpickle (imported)]

Producers do not really want to flare gas.

They do it because there is no processing plant and pipeline close by to send it to.

Gas pipelines and processing plants cannot be built overnight.

Storing the gas costs more than the gas is worth.

Yes I worked for an evil giant oil company at one time, we were not evil because

we wanted to be evil we were evil because it was the most practical thing to do

at the moment. When we could change our evil ways we did.

[Riverwind (imported)]

Lets see if I have this right, the oil company drills for gas/oil but has no place to put it if they find any so the best thing to do is pollute the environment. Must be nice, maybe we need to deregulate them because what other industry can pollute with impunity because they put the cart before the horse? Now don't tell me that its a crap shoot on drilling, that would have worked and been true 100 years ago but today they know before they drill that they will find oil/gas.

River

[moi621 (imported)]

They should be heavily carbon taxed.



Heavily because it was wasteful.

Stranger then strange is fracking, blindly fracturing the Earth and release pockets of methane, sometimes into fresh water reserves or other unplanned areas of methane release.

Fracking is the subterranean equivalent to mountain top removal mining. So absurd.

Fracking is done to acquire the same stuff that is flamed off. Am I missing something here?

Time for a CO2 flame off carbon tax and to see how fast they learn to "harvest" waste methane.

Moi

Another Populist solution

[Riverwind (imported)]

Again I agree with Moi, who would have thunk it.

River

[Sweetpickle (imported)]

I know it is generally pointless to insert facts into these discussions, but;

gas deep inside the earth is generally held in porous rocks, sort of like water in a sponge.

After drilling a well, if left to natural forces the gas can be produced but it will be very slow

as the gas makes it's way through these rocks. In fracturing, water is injected under enough

pressure to crack the rocks along weak seams, then sand is pumped in so that when the water

pressure is relieved the cracks will not close completely. This speeds up the process of getting the

trapped gas out.

In and of itself fracturing causes no problems, however like most things that humans do it can be

done badly. We don't stop flying or driving because some fool crashes, and "fracking" causes a lot

less problems than flying or driving.

[moi621 (imported)]

And if you remove the mountain top with more care,

or strip mine with . . . and all topographically destructive mining, if done right. . .



Fracking is no doubt "efficient". That is why they do it. (I am so smart)

I do not believe it is a sound mining system anymore then the topographically destructive systems. At least with the later we might require they build a new mountain and seed it with appropriate vegetation, stream bed, some restoration.

I do not trust fracking anymore then I trust living under high power lines, regardless of Federal science.

And there is no restoration after fracking. I do not except the exactness of that science.

1) No flaming of waste methane without a tax.

2) Drill for methane. Gulf of Mexico has a lots.

3) Just say no to fracking and fracking's friggin' Science! (Who paid for that Science;) )

Moi

Sp <sniff> how could you

River Y'know Bob3 and I are no longer BFF

[Riverwind (imported)]

From everything I have read and herd Fracking is causing problems with water supplies, the warning has been given but like other things that make lots of money it is being ignored and will continue until the people start dieing and the lawsuits start happening, and its just one more thing they will keep in the courts for 30 years and finally the Supreme court will lower the amount these poor companies need to pay because its all about the money.

Yes Moi, I agree with you again, damn that's three in a row.

River