A new report from the Energy Policy Research Foundation discusses natural gas flaring in North Dakota's Bakken play. According to the report, four billion dollars are being invested by the oil and gas industry for natural gas gathering and processing in North Dakota from now until 2017, an infrastructure investment that leads the authors to conclude that natural gas flaring in North Dakota may have peaked. However, they point out that a dramatic reduction in flaring will require each producing well to be hooked up to a gathering pipeline, which will send it to a compressor and then to a processing facility, a process that requires significant planning, permitting, investment, and construction time. Therefore, according to the report, even though natural gas processing plant capacity in North Dakota is keeping up with natural gas production, there still remains a lag in flaring, suggesting there are infrastructure delays in the building of gathering lines to individual wells. The authors speculate these are due to rights of way and related construction delays. Read more...
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