North Dakota is one of the least populous states, yet the light pollution map shows a huge field of light pollution in the western part of the state. What is going on there?
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3&lat=3677794&lon=-9253078&layers=B0TFFFFFFFFF
Oil and gas operations? I’ve seen rigs lit up pretty much 24/7. Also, some of them just burn off excess NG.
The Bad Astronomer pointed this out a while back. It’s just disturbing. Incredible satellite image of aurora over Canada with city lights… and something else
I don’t understand why natural gas is burned off. Surely it would be better to capture it for sale?
https://energyofnorthdakota.com/home-menu/impacts-solutions/flaring/
That’s roughly 10 billion cubic feet flared in 2015. And according to one source “On a daily basis, the average U.S. home uses 168 cubic feet of natural gas.”, which, if I did the math correctly, makes North Dakota flares gas enough for a city 160k homes.
That’s homes, not people, and it’s all lighting up the sky rather than heating and cooking stuff.
It’s a byproduct of more profitable oil, and capturing it requires expensive infrastructure.
So it’s not just light pollution, it’s vast amounts of CO2 pollution!
I’d also assume the relatively flat terrain allows light sources to be seen from much further than in mountainous states.
This has been happening for a long time now (>10 years).
When oil comes out of the ground it comes with gas called associated gas. You separate the oil and gas. You can collect the oil in tanks and send it in a oil truck to the refinery.
If there is a pipeline nearby, that accepts the raw gas, you can send it to the pipeline. If not, the most economic thing to do is to flare it. Often the flares are underground, so you can’t see it from the road but satellite is another matter.
DOE and other players have run lots of research to capture this gas but nothing has worked so far. There are a lot of complications that are not suitable to go over in this thread.
It should be mentioned that flaring the gas is at least better than just venting it: Methane is also a greenhouse gas, and a stronger one than carbon dioxide.
The local brewery also flames off something-- I hope they use some of it for boiling.
Brian
Flaring is a waste and waste offends me. Rather than charging the companies tax on what they sell, tax them on the gas & oil they take out of the ground? Gas leaks into the atmosphere? Pay the state. Burn off the gas? Pay up.
North Dakota is not well regulated just because of the sheer number of production sites popping up in so little time. So a fair bit of methane makes it to the atmosphere. For example, a lot of these sites use Natural gas (associated gas) in their pneumatic systems which vents to atmosphere. Lots of venting in the early phases of production too. And the flares are not checked for efficiency (not all the methane gets burnt). Then there are fugitive emissions.
On the plus side (and I say this jokingly) raw gas contains H2S and other sulfur species which get oxidized to SO2 which is “anti-greenhouse” gas.