Seems wasteful? But I know nothing about the process and am curious.
In: Engineering
Oil wells are in the middle of nowhere. There is no process needing energy near them some of the time. When there is, gas is pipped to the nearby user. When there is no nearby user the gas is flared because CO2 pollution is much less harmful than CH4 (natural pas) pollution.
Sometimes it’s flared off because there’s no local use for it, and natural gasses aren’t nearly as valuable as the oil. Sometimes it can be flared off because piping to move it someplace useful hasn’t been built yet. Is some applications, the gas is collected and pumped back down other wells to build pressure to push oil up other wells. There have been a few companies that have tried to build generators that will run off of the gas, hooked up to crypto mining rigs, but I don’t think it’s a widespread thing.
It is wasteful to flare gas. Pipelines are expensive and may take years to build. It’s much easier to build a tank to hold liquid oil.
Nat gas conditioning plants can be built that would remove CO2, remove sulfur, and condense higher hydrocarbons (propane, butanes, etc).
But these all take more time and usually aren’t done in advance of drilling a well.
Gonna blow your mind: the whole oil business is based on a bunch of short sighted things that make no sense in any long term way but are most profitable in the very short term. No grand planner would do oil the way the human race has at all
They flare it when the cost concentrate the gas and to move it to the place it can be sold is higher than the price of the gas. Why would I pay $3 to handle and ship the gas I have when it’s only gonna net me $2? End up net -$1.
Since we have no price or penalty for emissions, it is free for them to simply burn it.
It demands much infrastructure to move gas and it is not easily exported to other places. It demands a pipeline all the way from well to liquidating plant or consumer. In the US shale basins the wells have become so gassy that production has been curtailed because the natural gas pipelines are over loaded at some gas terminals gas is negative cost people are paid to take it out of the pipe. It is not legal to flare the gas from the shale oil basins so the oil service companies can only pay people to take the gas.
Gas flaring is used when a sudden build up of pressure occurs. A friend in the industry told me if they have to gas flare then something is wrong. So I guess the reason they don’t harness the power is that they hope it never occurs. I think of it like puking. If I have to spew I need to do it right now, out the window, not in a cup.
Latest Answers