Flaring Story On Front Page Of New York Times

Updates

December 18, 2013: An alert reader caught a problem with The New York Times. 

The quantity of natural gas produced in North Dakota apparently slipped past the fact checkers at The New York Times. The Times reported:

“At the same time, processing plant capacity has doubled since 2010 and six gas processing plants will be either built or expanded in North Dakota in the next few years, increasing processing capacity from a current 1.01 million cubic feet of processing capacity to nearly 1.7 million cubic feet of capacity by the end of 2015."

The correct volumes should be a current capacity of 1.01 BILLION cubic feet per day....going to 1.7 BILLION cubic feet of capacity by the end of 2015.  

 

With ND oil production nearing 1 million barrels per day, the volume (erroneously) reported by The Times would be equal to a little over 1 cubic foot of natural gas per barrel.  

In reality, the ratio is about 1000 cubic feet per barrel produced.   In the central area of the Williston Basin the ratio is closer to 1,500 to 2,000 cubic feet for each barrel of oil produced.  

 

The OneOK Garden Creek plant alone processes 100 million cubic feet per day.  Add to that  two plants west of Williston, one southwest of Alexander, the Hess plant at Tioga, Robinson Lake near Parshall, Signal Butte and others. 

 I wish I would have caught that, but I didn't so I guess I shouldn't be too hard on The New York Times but one would think their experts would have caught it.
 

Original Post

This story, linked at an MDU website, was, in fact, a front page story, front and center, of yesterday's New York Times.

Surprisingly, it's a fairly well-balanced story.

They still have their facts wrong about that "famous" NASA photograph from space regarding flaring in North Dakota. The vast majority of those "lights" were lit-up rigs and well sites; very few were actually due to flaring.

The NY Times failed to mention that flaring on North Dakota state land is not the problem. The problem rests with flaring on BLM-managed land in Dunn County, the reservation.

But all in all for The New York Times, a pretty well-balanced article. I was surprised to see it front-and-center, front page.