A Mysterious Patch Of Light Shows Up In The North Dakota Dark
January 17th, 2013Via: NPR:
What we have here is an immense and startlingly new oil and gas field — nighttime evidence of an oil boom created by a technology called fracking. Those lights are rigs, hundreds of them, lit at night, or fiery flares of natural gas. One hundred fifty oil companies, big ones, little ones, wildcatters, have flooded this region, drilling up to eight new wells every day on what is called the Bakken formation. Altogether, they are now producing 660,000 barrels a day, double the output two years ago, so that in no time at all, North Dakota is now the second largest oil producing state in America. Only Texas produces more, and those lights are a sign that this region is now on fire … to a disturbing degree — literally.
Six years ago, this region was close to empty. The few ranchers who lived here produced wheat, alfalfa, oats and corn. The U.S. Geological Survey knew there were oil deposits underground, but deep down, two miles below the surface. It wasn’t till this century that the industry developed a way to pull that oil to the surface at a cost that made it practical. Fracking, as you probably know, means pumping water and chemicals down pipes, fracturing the rock, releasing the oil. The technology is hugely controversial, in part because of those lights.
When oil comes to the surface, it often brings natural gas with it, and according to North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources, 36 percent of the natural gas now extracted in North Dakota isn’t captured. Gas isn’t as profitable as oil, and the energy companies don’t always build the pipes or systems to carry it off. For a year (with extensions), North Dakota allows drillers to burn gas, just let it flare. There are now so many gas wells burning fires in the North Dakota night, the fracking fields can be seen from deep space.
