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Fracking for Oil Leads to a Lot of Natural Gas Waste

In North Dakota, an oil bonanza leaves natural gas going up in smoke.

By Paresh Dave

 

Frank and Wanda Leppell once lived on a quiet cattle ranch in the middle of a rolling prairie, the lowing of cattle and the chirping of sparrows forming a pleasant soundtrack to their mornings. No more.

Not since the pasture they've leased since 2009 became part of one of the nation's most productive new oil fields. Not since a well barely 200 yards from their front porch began shooting a torch of burning gas skyward, 24 hours a day, with a force as loud as a jet engine.

"My bedroom's like day _ I don't need a night light," said Wanda Leppell, who has pleaded with state officials _ so far without success _ to do something. Her husband minces fewer words. "Rotten noise," he says. "Rotten smell, and terrible waste."

The rapid escalation of energy production in shale formations across the U.S. has produced a bonanza of oil, but it has left many states scrambling to handle the natural gas that often flows in large volumes along with the crude. Gas pipeline construction often lags behind the development of new wells, and the result is that billions of dollars' worth of gas that might be warming homes or fueling power plants is going up in smoke.

The issue is at its most severe in North Dakota, where the amount of gas flared in the Bakken oil field has nearly tripled since 2011, sending more than $1 billion a year worth of gas as waste into the sky.

The flames have produced a collective glow that makes rural North Dakota resemble a large metropolis on satellite images and prompted environmental analysts to warn that flaring annually releases as many climate-changing greenhouse gases as 1 million automobiles.

Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, saying he is "embarrassed" by a gas flaring record that he said has "been easy on companies," has vowed that the state will strictly enforce new rules aimed at cutting the waste. State officials say the regulations, which took effect in June, will curb the proportion of total natural gas production flared from 28 percent in May to 10 percent in 2020.

"We will reduce flaring _ it's just that simple," Dalrymple said. The pledge hasn't soothed the Leppells, whose 30-acre homestead has become surrounded by three well pads since they purchased it in 2009 _ one of them directly on the 1,200-acre pasture they lease.

Because they only rent the pasture, they earn no royalties, unlike many North Dakota farmers and ranchers who have become wealthy from oil earnings. They say the state should have required infrastructure for capturing and marketing the gas before allowing more oil wells, which now gush $2.5 billion a month worth of crude.

"All of the details should have been worked out long ago," Wanda Leppell said. "Instead, I'm sitting here as a guinea pig because, you know, money talks."

Leppell said she doesn't want to move _ the couple relocated an old family house onto the then-secluded property when they bought the land in 2009 _ but she does worry about the health effects from living near so much flaming gas. Producers hold permits for 45 wells within 1.5 miles of their farmhouse. Her husband, a fire chief for 20 years, is concerned that a gas flare could spark a grass fire on a gusty day, something he said he has seen happen several times.

Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have spurred a nearly 200 percent increase in North Dakota oil production since 2010, mirroring a similar boom in Texas. But unlike states such as Texas and Pennsylvania, North Dakota drew mainly oil-drilling companies, attracted by the riches in the 360 million-year-old Bakken formation. Projected oil revenues far surpassed those from what was thought to be a minor amount of natural gas.

When gas recoveries surpassed forecasts, natural gas companies who had ignored North Dakota were forced to scramble to build pipelines needed to get the gas to market, officials said. A weather-shortened construction season, hilly terrain and haggling with landowners for rights-of-way have slowed the process.

Though crude oil can be shipped by truck, train or pipeline, only pipes can safely move natural gas. Financial incentives to build gas pipelines have been relatively low, with natural gas valued at 22 times less than North Dakota oil was in May.

"There was a delay for them to realize the size and sheer amount available," said Alison Ritter, spokeswoman for the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which regulates the industry.

Now, across western North Dakota, pilot lights torch gas streams as high as 20 feet into the air. At Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a remote expanse of barren buttes and rolling grasslands more than 30 miles from the nearest large city, complaints have arrived about air and light pollution.

In Texas, where pipelines are abundant, barely 1 percent of the gas produced statewide is flared. Since 2006, North Dakota's natural gas industry has added the equivalent of enough pipeline to stretch from Los Angeles to Miami and back twice. But the number of wells not connected to a pipeline has doubled, leaving about 10 percent of North Dakota's 10,000 wells lacking the necessary connections to processing plants.

"When you're drilling as many wells as we are and the infrastructure is behind, we worked on ways to reduce flaring and we saw numbers drop percent by percent, but we just couldn't quite catch up," Ritter said.

Because the market couldn't "achieve the desired result," the Industrial Commission recently ordered what amounted to "a huge sea change" in the industry, Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms told reporters. Companies submitting drilling permit applications must now explain how they will limit flaring, and if they exceed either flaring or pollution targets, the state can impose limits on oil production.

The proposed penalty regime, approved this month, takes effect in October. Had it been in effect in April, oil production would have been reduced by about 5 percent, Helms said.

Fearing that penalty's bite, the industry has submitted plans to build 1,000 miles of pipeline and additional processing plants. At least 400 miles of key pipeline segments are scheduled to be in place by 2017.

"It has to make economic sense for us to (build) it, of course, but I don't think anyone in our business wants to see production curtailments because it could affect all of us, and the state," said Brad Borror, a spokesman for Oneok Partners, the leading mover of natural gas in North Dakota.

Environmental activists concerned about the greenhouse gas emissions and wasted energy say they will watch to assure that lawmakers properly fund enforcement of the new rules. Ritter said she's already meeting with drillers to see if they're following through on either transporting more natural gas or testing machines that can productively use it on the spot.

(c)2014 Los Angeles Times

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