Issue of Flaring Flares Up in North Dakota & Texas

There is no bigger issue for natural gas's prospects 20 years into the future and the global acceptance of natural gas than its carbon footprint. Though it is easy to neglect such long-term thinking, given the pressures of the present, the gas industry forgets this point at its long-term peril.

To decrease natural gas's carbon footprint, the gas industry should support research funding for carbon capture and storage to have commercially viable solutions within a decade. Here it has common cause with some voices within the coal industry that genuinely accept global warming and some environmentalists who want viable carbon capture technology developed.

Beyond supporting the development of carbon capture technology,  the gas industry must slash right now methane leakage, come as close as possible to eliminating venting, and decrease significantly flaring.

A big increase in permits to flare gas in Texas and substantial flaring of natural gas in North Dakota spotlights the practice of flaring. Here are the numbers.

In 2011, as much as 35% of gas in North Dakota was flared, according to the Energy Information Administration.  http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4030.  EIA further states, "The percentage of flared gas in North Dakota is considerably higher than the national average; in 2009, less than 1% of natural gas produced in the United States was vented or flared."

In Texas, permits issued to flare gas increased from 158 in 2009 to 651 in 2011.  The jump in flaring coincides with especially a boom in oil production.  Gas generally is flared when it is associated with oil production and when gathering pipelines are not available to take the gas to market.

Compared to venting methane or gas, flaring gas reduces in the near term the global warming potential by destroying methane and releasing instead carbon dioxide--a less potent global warming pollutant in the short run.  It also should be noted that Professor Howarth in his study assumed that 100% of methane at shale gas wells is vented during the flowback period, a demonstrably false assumption.

While flaring is a better environmental practice than venting methane (as methane over an initial 12 years traps about 22 times more heat than carbon dioxide), the best practice is to capture methane and put it in a pipeline.  As a result, a group of investors representing $500 billion in assets wrote in March a letter to oil and gas producers expressing concern about the volume of gas being flared.  http://www.ceres.org/files/oil-gas/investor-flaring-letter.

The investors also note that the flaring of gas in North Dakota amounts to a $100 million loss of product that would otherwise be revenue supporting their investments.  That is real money being lost right now.  Yet the damage being done to the natural gas "brand" by flaring and methane leakage rates higher than need be is greater still.