3 ms·

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state ne

I seem to be one of the few persons commenting so far who actually lives in the region and regularly reads local reporting on issues in North Dakota (a state neighboring my state). Western North Dakota, where the Bakken Shale oil boom is occurring, is very sparsely populated and historically had minimal infrastructure. It takes TIME to build pipelines to move the natural gas brought up by oil drilling operations to natural gas customers. Pipeline proposals are currently in regulatory review. There isn't even pipeline infrastructure in place yet for all of the petroleum production in North Dakota--much of the oil produced there is brought to broader markets in tanker trucks, and the truck traffic volumes are putting a lot of stress on highway roadbeds until the highways can be upgraded. Right now there is a boom economy in western North Dakota, with extremely high wages, low unemployment, a shortage of single women, http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-oil-boom-unsettles-gender-balance-some http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_22382285/north-dakota-... and established businesses in the region importing workers from as far away as Illinois just to keep up normal operations as workers quit to join oil field crews. There hasn't been time to build infrastructure yet to move away the natural gas to markets that will pay for the gas--especially because the price of natural gas all over the United States has crashed because of the huge increase in production in the last few years. But given time, yes, there will be infrastructure in place to transport Bakken Shale gas to other markets, and I'm sure that we here in Minnesota will be as glad to have North Dakotan natural gas to supplement our nuclear-powered energy grid as we already are to have North Dakotan petroleum brought in by truck. Once more pipelines are built, the entire United States energy economy will become more flexible. Still to be figured out is the economics of converting natural gas deliquefaction terminals (those cost BILLIONS of dollars and years to build or convert) along the Gulf Coast into liquefaction terminals, so that the United States can get into the business of exporting liquified natural gas. It could happen. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula used to flare off all of their natural gas incidentally brought up during petroleum production--there was no local market for it. It took a long time to develop natural gas liquefaction; now there is international trade in natural gas that was undreamed of when I was growing up.

revelation 13y ago
I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero, it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality. There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states quickly clear out all regulatory law to make place for the new boom, and when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.
- Crito 13y ago
  Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2. If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use. There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity, then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is never pumped up in the first place. We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came from, but that really is not practical. The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't like what is going on in North Dakota.
  - joeyo 13y ago
    > Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive > reasons still produces that same CO2. True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale. There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly the same.

revelation 13y ago

I don't get it. If you don't have the capacity to transport what you are producing, you can't be producing. Or put very simply: you can not be allowed to burn off unwanted gas. The cost is certainly not zero, it is an enormous sum that dwarfs whatever profit they could hope to get from selling it, and it is failed states only that would allow this massive negative externality. There seems to be no learning in the American midwest. Every other time some novel way of destroying the environment comes along, disenfranchised states quickly clear out all regulatory law to make place for the new boom, and when it's over they are left with unemployed single men with a bunch of new trucks and a wrecked environment while the companies made off with the profit.

Crito 13y ago
Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive reasons still produces that same CO2. If it were burned for productive reasons, some of the thermal energy released would be stored in chemical bonds formed by the manufacturing of any number of things, but most of it would ultimately still be released into the atmosphere as waste heat during some stage of its use. There is the angle that if more natural gas were used to generate electricity, then less coal burning would be required. That certainly is an argument for getting and burning more natural gas in power plants, but barring that possibility in the present due to poor logistics, we will still be burning that coal whether the natural gas is burned off as waste, or whether it is never pumped up in the first place. We could also spend money taking the gas and shoving it back where it came from, but that really is not practical. The bigoted attitude towards the mid-west is uncalled for, even if you don't like what is going on in North Dakota.
- joeyo 13y ago
  > Burning the gas as waste contributes CO2 to the > atmosphere, but burning the gas for productive > reasons still produces that same CO2. True, but if has to be burned, it may as well be productive. Moreover, if it's burned unproductively now, then presumably there is other productive CO2 being released now as well (unless we start accepting black-outs). There could be as much as two units of CO2 being released now, versus a single unit of CO2 otherwise. So that's more CO2 over a short time-scale. There are time-scales over which releasing CO2 is more or less harmful; I don't pretend to know the critical ones. However, it seems self evident that if that rate of release can be slowed, then its consequences will be less harmful, even if the total amount of CO2 released by T_{infinity} is exactly the same.