Earth is One Gassy Planet

Big oil. Doing their part to save rape the world.

Methane gas leak forces S. California residents out of their ...

One of those little red dots in Connecticut no doubt represents the Skull & Bones Club, flaring off a little methane.

I'm going to presume they are flaring off natural gas, which is difficult to store. Converting power plants to natural gas makes sense to me, but I guess they would do that if it was feasible. My waste-water magazine has articles on areas converting vehicles and other things to burn the natural gas from waste treatment plants. It doesn't take too long to get payback. Flaring off fuel that could power our uses is not very smart.

I think maybe it's not economically feasible nor expeditious to store it for later use.

...and probably a lot of sour gas too....

Yes, but it can be sweetened. Of course, that costs money, so they just burn it and pollute the air.

CNG is big business, ships are made to transport it, liquified and kept in insulated

tanks. St. Thomas is in the process of converting over from burning jet fuel (!) (GE turbines) for electric power to CNG. First they have to construct insulated storage, then convert the power plants to burn natural gas. It should save a lot on energy costs once it gets up and running. They used to get fuel at a reasonable price from the Hess refinery on St. Croix, but it shut down due to being inefficient, having to burn fuel to make fuel.

That's the rub with natural gas, it doesn't store liquid at room temp like propane, and probably is troublesome to pump and distribute as a liquid. As a gas, it's quite popular for home heating, cooking, etc. ('city gas').

As a gas it occupies too much volume to bother with, if your motive is only maximum profit.

Just frack it, and flare it.

flaring gas (of any kind) presumably means combustion, with many obnoxious and not so obnoxious by-products.

Combustion presumably means producing heat.

That heat could be harnessed, and some productivity could be enhanced, again presumably, although absent any reason (such as morality, environmental regulations, lack of capital, increased profits by avoidance) it appears to be generally accepted practice to flare it.

So why not just release it. Is it actually more harmful or dangerous?

Yes, methane and hydrogen sulfide are generally more dangerous/harmful than the combustion products: co2, so2, and water.

This is, of course, a gross simplification, but useful none the less.

Flaring is an 19th century solution. Surely it's possible to use that gas to power a turbine and do something useful with the energy.

This is just more proof that if you don't legislate a control on something, companies will do what is most expeditious for them to do. It's lazy engineering.

Lazy engineering? No.

It's uncaring management, abetted by politicians who have been bribed by special interest groups, like big oil and greedy investors!

Wall Street doesn't care about the environment, unless money can be made on it.

At our Water Pollution Control Plant we used to Flare off the excess Methane from our Anaerobic Digesters or burn it in our dual gas train boilers. We have stepped it up since then sending all our gas to a 600KW Co-gen that also contains a heat recovery system. No reason that anyone who just Flares it off cannot do similar. At least they flare it rather than just releasing the gas though. If not flared it can be 30-40 times more harmful to the environment.