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Interesting. Oil companies frack to get petroleum, and are OK with burning the natural gas at the well head. I get the impression that a big reason they choose
by frank2 7y ago
Interesting. Oil companies frack to get petroleum, and are OK with burning the natural gas at the well head. I get the impression that a big reason they choose to capture the natural gas instead is criticism of just burning it by environmentalists, but maybe it is more environmentally friendly to just burn it in the absence of the political will to ban fracking. (I am assuming that burning at the well head is an effective way to reduce the amount of unburnt gas released.)
- breakyerself 7y agoApparently I misunderstood how it works. Averaged over 100 years its 34x more potent, but the vast majority of the impact is early on.
- throwaway100773 7y agoThey flare it where there is no infrastructure or insufficient infrastructure to get the gas to market. There are limits on what can be flared and this is what drives some of the decision making. However, if sufficient infrastructure exists they are literally burning money by flaring the gas or just letting it evaporate into the atmosphere.