It’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’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...