every day drillers in North Dakota burn off enough gas to heat half a million homes
Oh that will end well. We should definitely let them drill in the arctic.
And note how it's not reducing the cost of gas, it's massively profitable because gas prices are so high. [1]
So all those "drill baby drill" chants, well there you have it. Prices as high as ever and destroy the environment as a bonus.
Let taxpayers pay to clean it up in a decade after they've burnt out the state, simply dissolve the corporation so there is no responsibility, just like the toxic ash piles the coal industry leaves behind.
Maybe I'm the ignorant one but are you conflating gas from oil with natural gas, which actually has been driven to record low prices[1], so much so that utilities have switched from coal to natural gas at such a fast pace that it reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by a considerable amount in 2012[2]? "Prices as high as ever and destroy the environment as a bonus" may be doubly wrong.
You would be correct. Gasoline comes from Oil using a process called cracking which separates out the heavier components from the lighter ones used to fuel cars. Natural gas (not from oil) has prices that are still extremely low in North America.
It's still a tragic waste showing gluttonous consumption. If North America were to switch cars/homes over to natural gas then they would solve two problems, 1. Reduce emissions from Oil use 2. Not be so damn wasteful.
Prices of gas from oil are at all time high (except irregularities). Draw a line on that chart above to see.
Every penny gas goes up extracts millions from the economy.
Natural gas prices being so low is why they are burning it off instead of investing in the equipment to capture it - because no-one dares regulate their massive profit from oil.
It's worth noting that if they didn't burn the escaping methane, it would be a far worse greenhouse gas than the CO2 the burnt methane turns into.
In other words if you can't capture 100% of the gas (which presumably is almost never going to be possible) it's actually critical that you burn the rest.
Someone please write an algorithm that tests HN comment submissions against the transcripts of both Fox News and MSNBC. If your comment text appears in either, it doesn't get posted.
Yes I think the safe assumption is "How much gas does it take to heat half a million homes for 1 day = how much gas the oillfields burn off in one day"
Half a million homes is pretty much all of North Dakota, where heating bills in BRUTAL winters have been driven to insane lows because of the abundance of natural gas. We'd need to export it, and we don't have the infrastructure, and that's not going to be a priority until the oil infrastructure is built out which will take quite some time.
Oh that will end well. We should definitely let them drill in the arctic.
And note how it's not reducing the cost of gas, it's massively profitable because gas prices are so high. [1]
So all those "drill baby drill" chants, well there you have it. Prices as high as ever and destroy the environment as a bonus.
Let taxpayers pay to clean it up in a decade after they've burnt out the state, simply dissolve the corporation so there is no responsibility, just like the toxic ash piles the coal industry leaves behind.
1. http://i.imgur.com/FFof4.png