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If we mine the same amount of gas, and discard the natural gas part, then shouldn't the price of helium go up?
by faeyanpiraat 7y ago
If we mine the same amount of gas, and discard the natural gas part, then shouldn't the price of helium go up?
- reportgunner 7y agoSorry, but how does one discard natural gas ?
- ashildr 7y agosee [Wikipedia: Gas flare](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare)
- smcl 7y agoI would simply collect the helium (e.g. in a net, or tupperware box) and discard that which is not helium or place it carefully back where I found it
- de_watcher 7y agoPut it in a yellow bin.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoSo in the North Sea, where flaring gas at high volumes (as another poster mentioned) is banned, this is actually done a lot. Typically you have a field producing lots of oil and some gas ("associated gas"). Building infrastructure and pipelines to process and ship out the gas is too expensive given the small volumes, so the natural gas is reinjected into the reservoir, only the oil is produced and exported. Then after the oil production becomes depleted after many years, one can switch to producing the (now more concentrated) natural gas. Apart from reducing CO2 emissions and giving potential for future profits from gas production, the reinjection strategy also maintains higher reservoir pressure thus boosting oil production. The fact that gas is flared at some fields speaks volumes of how crazy the oil industry is. The Statfjord field is a prime example of a field with reinjection and subsequent gas production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statfjord_oil_field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statfjord_oil_field
- SlowRobotAhead 7y agoWhy would the natural gas be discarded? It would be available and priced like helium is now. Someone would use it. It’s not like a safe storage, efficient, fairly clean source of energy is ever going to be worthless.
- masto 7y agoIt’s discarded today. Natural gas itself is a byproduct of drilling for oil, and there are places where, due to a lack of convenient pipelines for transporting it, huge quantities of natural gas are just burned as waste. Edit: citation. It’s called “flaring”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare#Impacts_of_waste_flaring_associated_gas_from_oil_drilling_sites_and_other_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_flare#Impacts_of_waste_fla...