Letter to the Editor: Flaring should be curbed
February 13, 2013 at 6:00 pm in The Dickinson Press
If you live in western North Dakota or look at satellite images from outer space, you can see the changes brought on by the Bakken oil boom. While North Dakota relishes in the economic bounty, negative impacts are being seen and reported. One of them natural gas flaring we can and should readily address. Continue Reading
Not only a state parasite but a O&G Luddite to boot. Curb (non-polluting) flaring and O&G exploration is curbed. He must be from Fargo … oh wait … he is. Another reason Western ND should secede.
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I am supportive of the oil and gas industry and thank full for the opportunitues it has provided folks in western ND and from various other parts of the country that have found their way out here.
In saying that, at some point we can’t continue to be ridiculously wasteful with this resource. I can’t recall the exact numbers that I have heard as far as how much we are flaring and the number of homes it potentially could heat, but we need to tighten the rules and force the hands of the oil companies to start making it a priority to do something other than flaring. Oil companies will not do anything until they have to – period. One year is plenty of time to deal with the issue. Maybe with the one year time frame across the board, natural gas companies would have enough incentive to get the infastructure in place to handle the bulk of the natural gas.
I’m tired of the agruement that applying new laws will drive the oil companies out. It just won’t happen, as long as those laws are applied evenly and fairly and aren’t over reaching. This proposal is not over reaching by any means.
Take a drive out in the badlands or a boat ride on Lake Sakakawea and see how much has changed with the insane amount of flaring that goes on. At some point we need to start considering the beauty we used to have in western ND and the State must do what it can to help preserve as much of that as possible with balancing oil development in the heart of that.
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The cost of capturing the natural gas would be passed on to consumers so therefore any excuse for not doing so is weak at best. Where in the heck is the governor on this issue? Protecting the ND environment should be a top priority for him.
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