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.
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."
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.
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 recent article in Harper’s:
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.
Maybe natural gas semis 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. 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.
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. Maybe not fast enough or sufficient, but they’re not going to cry over spilt milk, either.
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 or 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.. This has gone a long way in protecting them (they really are one of our most valuable ecosystem services).