A recent viral video stitching together time-lapse footage from the International Space Station wowed viewers with a view of earth never seen before. But what everyone missed except one eagle-eyed writer at Midwest Energy News was that the video featured the glowing lights of one "enormous 'city' in the middle of nowhere." That "city," Ken Paulman discovered, was in fact the fires of natural gas being flared off from thousands of wells in the Bakken oil shale formation. Without a pipeline nearby, 35 percent of all natural gas produced from oil extraction is flared. In a region where average daily temperatures this time of year range from 3 to (a high of) 24 degrees (before wind chill), the sight of a frozen landscape blazing with "Dakota candles" is truly apocalyptic.
That is amazing. I'm still somewhat dubious of the optimists in the shale plays, but no one can doubt that production has shot up thus far. It sure seems wasteful to flare off all that gas, though.
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