Oil companies extracting oil from the Bakken and Texas' Eagle Ford shale fields are flaring (burning off) enough gas to power all the homes in Chicago and Washington combined. The light from the flares can be seen from space.A leading factor in the tripling of the volume of flared waste gas over the last five years
I mean, beside the seven-fold increase in oil production in the Bakken fields
is the low price of natural gas in North America, which can make it uneconomic to build pipelines and tanks to handle the gas released by oil production.
There are some problems that you would rather have.
Continental said it already flared proportionately less gas than the industry average, was making progress on more reductions and agreed to report on its progress in 2013.
The North Dakota legislature is considering a bill to encourage flaring reduction through tax breaks. The state is also pushing producers to use gas to power drilling rigs.
