Frack!

Fracking hell!

The frack sand business is picking up around here and the sand pounders are back to work.

Invest in bottled water if you live anywhere hear where they're fracking and have a well.

The company I worked for is trying to pick up contracts again but unfortunately when you lay off the majority of your workforce getting people to sign contracts with you is a bit hard when they know you don't have the crews available to do the jobs.

Oh well at least I've gotten ~14 weeks of paid vacation (unemployment) out of it so far.

are you @ Bakken?

Yes.

Yes he is.

I've circled his house in the picture below.

Millions of dollars worth of natural gas are needlessly burnt off instead of being used. All you get is light and air pollution. And waste.

Ain't fracking great thing?

I've had this discussion before with the notorious North Dakota tire burner.

Yes we have had that conversation a few times and every time that picture gets posted I point out that the light is from the high powered lighting systems the crews use while working on the well sites and not from flares.

Most working well flares are about as bright as a single street light which when placed out in the middle of the prairie at half mile or more spacings really doesn't light up much.

Are you implying Minneapolis is not on fire? And the chimneys in Fargo are cold?

You just revised my world view!

Yes, we have.

But the power required to make the Bakken look brighter than the state of Minnesota has to be in the megawatts.

And the gas still gets flared instead of used productively.

Not because it has to be needlessly burnt, but because using it would mean spending money on infrastructure, instead of just making profit.

Can I change that? No.

Do I have to like it? No.

"But the power required to make the Bakken look brighter than the state of Minnesota has to be in the megawatts."

Way more than that. I figure 200 - 300 megawatts at least based on very conservative estimates.

Figure many of the work sites like where I was had 12 - 20 light plants with four 1000 - 1500 watt metal halide lights on each running all night then multiply that by the 1200 - 1500 or so assorted sites all being worked on at once.

Then on top of all of those add in the countless permanent crude and gas pumping/processing locations that are also lit up like small cities.

Most drilling rig sites and fraccing sites alone have more wattage going to lighting than most of our small towns use.

One thing I can say about the oil industry is apparently they are very afraid of the dark!

Natural gas is not the only gas thats coming from the wells. Like hydrogen sulfide. Better to burn it off then to come out and find the whole crew dead. So is saving gases that you can not use worth their life.

And if your going to complain about the flares wasting gas. What about the propane that is sustaining them.

what???

Absolutely NOTHING you said above is logical, or even sensible.

Natural Gas Facts | ND Pipeline Authority

"Flaring of natural gas occurs when natural gas is burned on location due to a lack of gathering pipeline infrastructure or economic alternatives"

"Natural gas produced from the Bakken/Three Forks is very rich in natural gas liquids (NGLs)."

Nowhere does any source I looked at cite personal safety as a reason excuse for flaring Bakken natural gas.

Are you suggesting that NG with the H 2S removed is safe to breathe?

Are you suggesting that NG with the H 2S removed is safe to breathe?

No it is not! We make the pipe for sour gas transport and yes it is more expensive than normal sweet crude or gas piping. However I fail to see the reasoning of the natural gas by burning in the atmosphere. The operation of oil refining is all based on natural gas, why waste it?

Natural Gas is not safe to breathe. But the concentration of H S2 to kill you is much less.

If you were working on a drilling rig. Would you rather have these gases coming out of the hole where you are working. Or off to the side of the location and burnt to reduce the hazard.

The quote give reason for it not being collected. Not why it's being burnt.

There are a lot of points of ignition on a drilling rig for these gases. The engine manifolds for one. Most the rigs in West Texas did not burn flares. Most were drilling stripper wells. The pretty much knew what they were going to drill thru. But all the same the bells and whistle were in place. Only times I saw a flare was if they knew or it was exploratory. Got good friend I made while out there. Get caught in gas explosion from natural gas coming from the hole. Instead of running he tried to get to a motor and shut it down to try to save the rig. He lived. But he wasn't in the best of shape. Worked with an old man who ran the yard for a drilling company. He got caught in a gas explosion on a rig. He had 3rd degree burns over most his body. What you see as wasted gas in flares I see as safety being taken care of for their employees.

Most of these rigs are contracted to drill a hole. They have nothing to do with product coming from the hole. So it not their responcibilty to salvage it as they drill. They do though have the responcible for the safety of their employees.

Still, I'd rather my gas bucks go to ND than someplace where folks want to kill us.

"Most drilling rig sites and fraccing sites alone have more wattage going to lighting than most of our small towns use."

Now I'm wondering if some of those sites end up consuming more power than they generate over the lifetime of the site, do they keep all the lights on when they're not pumping/fracking/etc?

Once they are done there is very little light on any well site. Most are not lit at all.

Yes, that's the work lighting on all the scaffolding, but it DOES look a lot like what I expect nighttime images of Centralia, PA to look like...

Except I'd expect Centrallia to be more of a cherry red glow, since that's what coal/charcoal looks like when burning.

All kidding aside, have fun out there. TCM.

II used to work near the town, I've never seen it glow at night. Smoke a lot but not glow.

I know, the mine fire is all underground, and traveling through the area doesn't seem like much, unless you find a sinkhole (and pray you find it, and not it finding you. With all the carbon monoxide underground from the fire, I doubt anyone who fell in a sinkhole without help RIGHT THERE would survive long enough for help to be summoned by cell phone). But when you talk about Centralia to the general public, they expect it to look like this huge crater fillled with burning embers, like a gigantic Weber grill in the ground.

@ first glance, i thought it was a cluster of stars and galaxies. No more hiding from afar.

fracking is relatively a new process.

50 years is new? on what planet?

What is the age of this planet?

4.3 billion

This time ... how about we do not frack .... there are better ways without the environmental issues to extract shale oil & gas. Maybe the frack rigs need to stay in yard.