I’m a native of western North Dakota, which is lit up like a Christmas tree these days due to flaring in the Bakken oil fields. It mystifies me why the ND state government allows them to do that, because it’s an environmental travesty.
Back when the price of oil was much higher, the state could have simply told the oil companies that they can’t extract a single drop of oil until they find a way to capture and use the natural gas. I guarantee they would have found a way. Now they can argue that the economics don’t work out, and meanwhile the state has become dependent on oil tax revenue.
Indeed - no argument there. A problem encountered with our regional landfill was that the utility lines leading to the landfill had to be upgraded to handle the new generated electricity.
A regional landfill in the Finger Lakes provides gas to the local ambulance squad, among others. That squad also uses geothermal.
The State of ND does make regulations for gas capture, although they will never get it all. See page 5 for the order: (note that gas driven generators are one solution)
Surely someone by now has done an effective analysis of the ‘greenhouse’ difference between flaring and venting wellhead or ‘fracture-released’ gas, and ideally noted if there is any pollution impact from recovering ‘flared’ gas as electricity or process/space heating rather than free burning.
The “extra” warming potential of methane over CO2 is due to methane being a much more dilute gas in the atmosphere than CO2. At the same absolute concentrations, CO2 is a bit over twice as effective as a GHG. Main benefit from using methane versus flaring is reducing the amount of other fuels burned.
N.B. Once the mean free path of a photon at a resonance frequency of a Green House Gas becomes less than about five miles (the thickness of the atmosphere would be if it was all at sea level density), the green house effect of adding more of that gas declines dramatically.
I’m baffled why anyone even cares whether it’s legal to ship LNG by rail. The margins on LNG between origin and destination are insufficient to support the cost of rail transportation in the overwhelming majority of markets, compared to (1) burning fuel oil, (2) pipelining the gas, or (3) burning the gas at origin and wire-lining the power.
LNG is also perishable; it all starts turning back to gas which if not immediately captured and burned to generate power is immediately lost to the atmosphere, the moment it’s liquified. Transportation losses to regasification in a container the size of a large ocean-going vessel sitting in a bath of 40 degree water aren’t so bad; the tank’s ratio of surface area to volume is low, the weight and dimensional penalties of insulation aren’t onerous, and the offgas is readily captureable and can be used for power. When LNG is shipped in a small container that isn’t hooked permanently to an engine room, and can’t afford the dimensional penalty of being swaddled in insulation, like a tank car, the offgassing can quickly become significant. Park that tank car for 30 days and it turns itself into an empty.
The safety of rail transportation of LNG isn’t unusual, unless you hold the belief that NO hazardous materials should be transported by ANY mode EVER.
Sorry but in modern times to be able to manufacture everything we want and need…dangerous things have to be transported. A controlled RR environment is certainly safer than a HWY free for all.