# From space, North Dakota's resource management looks pretty crappy **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 19, 2013, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335 "2013-03-19T05:37:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![EmAnJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@EmAnJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmAnJ)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/61 "2013-03-21T16:22:31Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > It’s basic economics, and you really don’t seem to understand that. > > Without the water, their wells don’t work, so no money made. > > Extracting, storing, and transporting the millions worth of gas right now is not possible. The infrastructure is not there. Developing sufficient infrastructure would cost literally hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. It will eventually be done, but it literally costs them money to do it right this very instant. > > And because it’s uneconomic to recover the gas, the workable solutions involve legislation rather than asking why they ‘waste’ the gas. It’s a waste from an environmental perspective, but for the companies operating, it’s a ‘waste’ of company resources to extract them unless there’s a good reason (like jail time or massive fines) to do otherwise. > > I’ve got a friend who has been working in/on an LNG plant in North Africa for the last 8 years. It’s still not open. From start to finish, it will be well over 12 years before it’s operational. And that’s with less stringent environmental regulations than the US. I agree. Storing it is not the solution. It will take decades to put the infrastructure in to handle all of the natural gas. You suggest storing it until then, but where? There is not enough space above ground to build storage (not to mention this also takes years and years to complete), and cavern storage is also limited. Storage is not a viable solution. The Gorgon LNG terminal I mentioned on the first page has been under construction for four years already, and won’t be online for at least another two. That timeline does not include the 5+ years of up front planning, consultation and approvals. This first phase of construction has cost approximately $30 billion. Not cheap nor speedy. ---
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/62 "2013-03-21T20:16:57Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Hmmm… this quote from the Christian Science Monitor made it sound like it was a lot more than that: > > > [@CSM](#): > > > > “Even at today’s depressed wellhead price of under $3.00 per thousand cubic feet, the 100 million cubic feet of natural gas that were flared each day in North Dakota last year represent approximately $110 million in lost revenue.” > > $110 million a day vs. per year is a big difference. $1 per cf isn’t correct. Still, it is a big waste. These guys don’t have any problem with hauling thousands of truckloads of water out to the middle of nowhere, so why not take the extra trouble for millions worth of gas? > > Still changes the story though. Thanks for the links. The Christian Science Monitor article was missing a word - that $110 million lost revenue is per **year** , not per day (but the 100 million cubic feet is per day - at $3 per MCF that works out to $300,000/day -\> $110 million/year). As noted previously in the thread, if the government really does feel that the resource wasted by flaring is important enough, restricting flaring through regulation/legislation is the way to go - operators will then be able to plan accordingly and will choose to not produce out of wells where a lot of flaring would be required. ---
**Author:** ![voltaire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voltaire/32/313_2.png) [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2013, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/63 "2013-03-21T20:28:22Z")
> [@Delayed\_Reflex](#): > > The Christian Science Monitor article was missing a word - that $110 million lost revenue is per **year** , not per day (but the 100 million cubic feet is per day - at $3 per MCF that works out to $300,000/day -\> $110 million/year). > > As noted previously in the thread, if the government really does feel that the resource wasted by flaring is important enough, restricting flaring through regulation/legislation is the way to go - operators will then be able to plan accordingly and will choose to not produce out of wells where a lot of flaring would be required. It’s not really missing a word, it’s just awkwardly worded: _"Even at today’s depressed wellhead price of under $3.00 per thousand cubic feet, the 100 million cubic feet of natural gas that were flared each day in North Dakota **last year represent approximately $110 million in lost revenue."** _ (Underlining and bolding mine) ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/64 "2013-03-22T05:28:16Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > It’s basic economics, and you really don’t seem to understand that. I do understand that. I haven’t really hammered on it, but there are other considerations here besides money/profits. I am getting fed up with the way the free market is treated as some kind of god that cannot be interfered with since that outlook so often leads to dumb results like this. Frankly I don’t know exactly where to go from there… I’ve noticed that whenever I gripe about the oil and gas industry, Norway turns out to have the best practices. So policies more like Norway’s might be a start, but of course things are more complicated than that. > [@](#): > > Extracting, storing, and transporting the millions worth of gas right now is not possible. The infrastructure is not there. Developing sufficient infrastructure would cost literally hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. It will eventually be done, but it literally costs them money to do it right this very instant. Yah, it isn’t possible right now because they didn’t plan ahead, and this has got to be the most foreseeable problem in recent history. Let me share with you a quote from [this](http://harpers.org/archive/2013/03/bakken-business/) recent article in Harper’s: > [@](#): > > The Bakken is a massive bed of rock in three layers: dark ones on top and bottom and a lighter one sandwiched in between, the middle layer’s pores richly endowed with oil- light tight crude. The image of the Oreo cookie, often invoked to describe the Bakken, captures its uniformity of structure and its color scheme but fails miserably to describe the obduracy and scale of this 25,000-square-mile slab, which is in places up to one hundred feet thick… > Shortly before his death in 2000, a United States Geological Survey scientist named Leigh Price circulated a paper concluding that the Bakken was a single deposit that held 413 billion barrels of oil. Price’s methods remained contested for some years, but even conservative estimates now put the Bakken’s holdings above 100 billion barrels. (By comparison, current “proved reserves”- the known amount of oil that can be economically extracted with current technology- for the entire United States are 23 billion barrels.)… > There are no wildcatters in the Bakken, not now. Every single well drilled in the area has a 99 percent chance of producing oil for about thirty years in predictable and tapering amounts. Wells drilled into the proven area generally enter the black when oil is above fifty or sixty dollars a barrel, which it has been for most of the past eight years. This is no longer wildcatting: this is plumbing. The odds of success are set in stone. Since at least 2000 it has been known that the potential output is staggering. Granted, it has only been recently that techniques have been developed to make it pay. Still, the sheer scale of the resource justifies planning ahead with infrastructure even if it costs billions. The alternative is another potential ecological disaster, again, because of the sheer scale of the resource. > [@](#): > > I’ve got a friend who has been working in/on an LNG plant in North Africa for the last 8 years. It’s still not open. From start to finish, it will be well over 12 years before it’s operational. And that’s with less stringent environmental regulations than the US. Well, 2000 was more than 12 years ago… ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/65 "2013-03-22T05:37:06Z")
> [@EmAnJ](#): > > Storing it is not the solution. It will take decades to put the infrastructure in to handle all of the natural gas. You suggest storing it until then, but where? There is not enough space above ground to build storage (not to mention this also takes years and years to complete), and cavern storage is also limited. Storage is not a viable solution. > > The Gorgon LNG terminal I mentioned on the first page has been under construction for four years already, and won’t be online for at least another two. That timeline does not include the 5+ years of up front planning, consultation and approvals. This first phase of construction has cost approximately $30 billion. Not cheap nor speedy. Maybe [natural gas semis](https://www.google.com/search?q=natural+gas+semi+trucks&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=yOpLUcDVOeazyQHwrYHADQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=947) can haul some of it out? Especially if they are designed to run on the fuel they’re haling. I haven’t worked out the numbers on this idea, however. Maybe haul it out on [natural gas trains](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/buffett-banks-on-natural-gas-trains-cm225855#.UUvtWxyG03U). Too late to entirely plan ahead for the Bakken, but maybe in some other country in the future these things can be developed more sensibly. But even at $30 billion for LNG infrastructure, the scale of the resource justifies it. Maybe it would be easier to transport the gas to an existing plant. Maybe there are enough NG power plants in the general area to justify some new pipelines. But I think we know for sure: the amount of gas wasted is only going to increase, and there is an incredible amount of gas to be had out of this formation. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/66 "2013-03-22T05:54:22Z")
> [@EmAnJ](#): > > Storing it is not the solution. ETA: Actually, it is all stored right now. More careful extraction is needed. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/67 "2013-03-22T14:57:19Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Well, 2000 was more than 12 years ago… Oil is not gas, and you were complaining (this time) about gas flaring, not oil extraction/storage. So your ellipses are pretty damned stupid. Seriously, for all the complaining you do about the oil/gas industry, you should really think about getting a fucking clue sometime about it. That’s really the damned point anyway. They’re getting at the oil and found a bunch of gas, too. Well, they didn’t know all the gas was there in 2000 and set up for oil extraction. Now they know gas is there too, and steps are now being made. North Dakota, at that point, could have set up new legislation to restrict flaring. But they didn’t. They aren’t a bunch of evil, mustache twirling men deciding to ruin the environment. And they aren’t a bunch of incompetents being led around by the oil companies. They’re simply a bunch of regular guys trying to do what they think is best for their state. And, to be honest, most of the residents of North Dakota probably approve of their handling of this job. I happen to think restriction of flaring is a great idea. But I’m not going to knock North Dakota for not having it in place before they knew they needed it. Or knock them too heavily for not going hard after the issue now. “Planning ahead”? Well, you need to know the gas is there FIRST. Natural gas semis/trains is a drop of water in a storm. Not scalable to an appreciable extent. The steps NOW being taken are the best ones available. And [both the extraction companies and legislators ARE doing something](http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/03/04/bakkens-top-producer-wants-to-snuff-out-flaring/). Maybe not fast enough or sufficient, but they’re not going to cry over spilt milk, either. ---
**Author:** ![EmAnJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@EmAnJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmAnJ)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/68 "2013-03-22T15:14:18Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > Maybe [natural gas semis](https://www.google.com/search?q=natural+gas+semi+trucks&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=yOpLUcDVOeazyQHwrYHADQ&sqi=2&ved=0CEsQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=947) can haul some of it out? Especially if they are designed to run on the fuel they’re haling. I haven’t worked out the numbers on this idea, however. Maybe haul it out on [natural gas trains](http://www.nasdaq.com/article/buffett-banks-on-natural-gas-trains-cm225855#.UUvtWxyG03U). Too late to entirely plan ahead for the Bakken, but maybe in some other country in the future these things can be developed more sensibly. > > …snip Yes, that is a transportation option, but not a storage option. **Great Antibob** has mentioned economics and you have stated your frustration about money being more important than the environment. I am frustrated about that as well, however, everything, every decision, is based on economic value. In order to prioritize the environment over the extraction of the resources (and the peripheral effects), you need to place a value on the environment. If the value of the environment is larger than the value of the resources, the environment wins. Unfortunately, it’s very, very difficult to place a value on the environment. I suggest you put some of your energy on this topic in to studying [Environmental](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics) or [Ecological Economics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_economics). One aspect of Environmental and Ecological Economics outlines ways in which to place values on the environment. For instance, there has been a lot of work on placing [monetary values on wetlands.](http://wetlandprotection.org/estimate-wetland-values/11.html). This has gone a long way in protecting them (they really are one of our most valuable ecosystem services). ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335/69 "2013-03-23T06:07:02Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Oil is not gas, and you were complaining (this time) about gas flaring, not oil extraction/storage. So your ellipses are pretty damned stupid. Seriously, for all the complaining you do about the oil/gas industry, you should really think about getting a fucking clue sometime about it. > > That’s really the damned point anyway. They’re getting at the oil and found a bunch of gas, too. Well, they didn’t know all the gas was there in 2000 and set up for oil extraction. Now they know gas is there too, and steps are now being made. Who’da thunk, fracking oil shale might produce natural gas? :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/from-space-north-dakotas-resource-management-looks-pretty-crappy/653335.md?page=3)