EcoAlert: Fracking North Dakota's Bakken Shale Formation from NASA's Earth Observatory
Posted on 01/31/2013 5:20:37 PM PST by LucyT
See NASA Graphic at link.
NASA Earth Observatory's Suomi Satellite captured the night time glow from hundreds of flares from rigs drilled into the Bakken shale oil formation of North Dakota, a 360-million-year-old tectonic plate, creating a light show the size of metropolitan Boston.
Fracking of the Bakken formation has liberated the oil that lies within...Flaring burns off excess natural gas during oil production.
The controversial process effectively wastes a natural resource while simultaneously emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
As of 2011, more than 35 per cent of North Dakota's natural gas production was burnt off in flares according to a study done by..."
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(Excerpt) Read more at dailygalaxy.com ...
"Flaring gas, in this particular case, IS wasteful and a shame, as one of the main reasons it is happening is because of a lack of gas pipelines, which are being delayed primarlly due to a bunch of red tape, usually due to environmental protests and regulations brought about by same.
"Natural gas is worth money and oil companies don't burn money unless they have no other economically viable choice."
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EcoAlert: Fracking North Dakota's Bakken Shale Formation from NASA's Earth Observatory
Beautiful.
The gas flares will go out as the infrastructure goes in.
Beautiful picture, LucyT.
Thank you so much for the ping.
I followed the links to the Wiki info, too and also looked at the larger photo at the link.
Absolutely gorgeous!
But of course the liberals & eco-nazis won’t let a pipeline be built to transport the gas....
Amazing picture but the rest of the article is useless. I guess they just thought they’d throw the word “fracking” in cuz it sounds cool. Fracking has nothing to do with it.
You’re absolutely right.
Buncha frackin idjits.
I’d bet very, very little of the light shown is from gas flares. It is from the ample electric lighting on homes, towns, rigs, terminals, oil/gas processing plants and other infrastucture. Gas flares would stand out as large and orangish yellow.
In November, the latest month for stats, ND produced 23.4 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of natural gas and there were sales of 15.8 Bcf, or 67% of the total. The rest would have been flared or used on site for fuel and power generation. Associated gas production has more than doubled in the past two years there as oil drilling has boomed. But at a market price there of only about $3.50/Mcf, the dollar value of that non-marketed gas is only about $23MM/mo. That is dwarfed by the $1.8 B/mo of oil value being created there at upwards of 750,000 b/d.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/statisticsvw.asp
Some Leftists will see the picture and freak because they will think ALL the lights in the Nation are from fracking flares...
Excellent! Thank you for that picture and all the other stuff as well.
Awww. You’re welcome.
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