Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
the Climate Risks of Arctic Drilling - natgas flaring
The main problem isn’t the oil itself—although, of course, if the 90 billion barrels of oil believed to be obtainable in the Arctic are burned in cars or trucks, the carbon released will help undoubtedly help intensify climate change. It’s chiefly the natural gas that will be produced along with that oil. Natural gas is essentially methane—and methane is a powerful, albeit short-lived greenhouse gas, with more than 20 times the warming potential of plain old carbon dioxide. By some estimates, there’s as much as 1.7 trillion cubic ft. of natural gas to be found in the Arctic.
But companies like Shell aren’t braving the elements in the Arctic to bring back natural gas. They’re there for the oil, which is worth far more—and not incidentally, is a lot easier to store and transport than gas. Natural gas either needs a pipeline network that can allow it to be shipped from the well to a consumer, or it needs to be cooled to super-low temperatures, after which it can be shipped on an LNG tanker. (Oil, by contrast, can be loaded without any intermediary steps onto a tanker.) There are neither many pipelines nor many LNG facilities in the far North, which means it’s not easy nor cheap for oil companies to actually do anything with the natural gas they’ll be producing alongside all that lovely oil. “The race in the Arctic is about the oil,” says Banks. “But the gas that goes along with it can be a huge source of carbon.”
Ideally oil companies would capture the natural gas and ship it, either by LNG tanker or pipeline. But that’s not likely given the current energy infrastructure—or lack of it—in the Arctic. Fortunately the gas won’t simply be released into the air—methane is highly combustible, and uncontrollable amounts combustible gas is not something a drilling rig like simply floating around. (See Horizon, Deepwater.) Instead, the next best option is to burn the gas in a controlled process, also known as flaring. Flaring reduces the amount of pure methane reaching the atmosphere, but it can also produce other pollutants—including black carbon, otherwise known as soot.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/07/20/its-not-just-spills-the-climate-risks-of-arctic-drilling/
But companies like Shell aren’t braving the elements in the Arctic to bring back natural gas. They’re there for the oil, which is worth far more—and not incidentally, is a lot easier to store and transport than gas. Natural gas either needs a pipeline network that can allow it to be shipped from the well to a consumer, or it needs to be cooled to super-low temperatures, after which it can be shipped on an LNG tanker. (Oil, by contrast, can be loaded without any intermediary steps onto a tanker.) There are neither many pipelines nor many LNG facilities in the far North, which means it’s not easy nor cheap for oil companies to actually do anything with the natural gas they’ll be producing alongside all that lovely oil. “The race in the Arctic is about the oil,” says Banks. “But the gas that goes along with it can be a huge source of carbon.”
Ideally oil companies would capture the natural gas and ship it, either by LNG tanker or pipeline. But that’s not likely given the current energy infrastructure—or lack of it—in the Arctic. Fortunately the gas won’t simply be released into the air—methane is highly combustible, and uncontrollable amounts combustible gas is not something a drilling rig like simply floating around. (See Horizon, Deepwater.) Instead, the next best option is to burn the gas in a controlled process, also known as flaring. Flaring reduces the amount of pure methane reaching the atmosphere, but it can also produce other pollutants—including black carbon, otherwise known as soot.
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/07/20/its-not-just-spills-the-climate-risks-of-arctic-drilling/
