Finally Some Numbers On Flaring; Almost 50 Percent Of Natural Gas Is Flared On The Reservation

Updates

May 17, 2014: this is precious. The agency who oversees flaring in Fort Berthold (see below) has now announced it will devote its limited resources to study oil and gas industry impacts on developing the Niobrara. Trib.com is reporting:

On the heels of a report that the Bureau of Land Management failed to inspect more than 2,000 oil and natural gas wells over a three-year period, the BLM formally announced Friday that it will study the environmental impacts of expanding development in Converse County.

The bureau said that up to 5,000 oil and gas wells could be drilled there in the next decade. 

Federal regulators failed to inspect the wells on public lands over a three-year period, the Government Accountability Office reported this week, in a reflection of rising energy production across the United States.

The agency screwed up in the Bakken and now taking that expertise to the Niobrara. By the way, it does put the Bakken into perspective. The article says that up to 5,000 wells will be drilled in Converse county in the next decade (ten years?). They will drill that many wells in the next two years in the Bakken.

Original Post

Maybe the "number" has been reported before; I don't know. Long before the mainstream media noted the problem, I calculated that the BLM-managed reservation had the biggest problem with regard to flaring. I even started a "BLM-flaring" tag. Finally, it's being acknowledged. And again, maybe it's been reported before but I can't recall.

The Dickinson Press is reporting that the reservation is the main problem for flaring in North Dakota:

Reducing natural gas flaring on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation has more hurdles than the rest of the state, but a tribal task force says flaring can be cut in half within five years.

The reservation flares about 48 percent of its natural gas due to a lack of adequate pipelines and other infrastructure, said Carson Hood Jr., director of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation Energy Division.

“In the beginning, industry had not developed the infrastructure to accommodate future wells,” said Hood, one of three people heading the tribe’s flaring task force.

But the reservation has additional challenges, including working through lengthy processes with federal agencies to secure rights-of-way for pipelines, Hood said.

One would think the federal government would expedite natural gas pipelines with all the concern about global warming. 

I don't understand all the obstacles. Just shut down drilling. That will solve the flaring problem.

The solution: five years to get the flaring to half what it is now. Five years. Wow, the federal bureaucracy works slowly. Oh, that's right. It's been six years of review for the Keystone and it looks like now, the government is considering starting completely over on the Keystone review. The Obama administration really has problems with pipelines, it seems. Even the Washington Post agrees it's embarrassing.

For newbies: I've always said that flaring was a red herring. If folks were seriously concerned about the flaring problem it could be solved quickly.