New ND Flaring Regs Make Statoil's Nat Gas Container System Timely

While the comparative amount of emissions from natural gas flaring in a year might not seem like much, estimates are that as much as $1 million worth of energy a day is being wasted, according to Bentek Energy in a Jan. 14 story on National Public Radio (NPR).

Statoil's Solution to Flaring

Statoil does not accept continual flaring as a cost of doing business, the company said. Current flaring is less than .4 percent of global gas flaring, and the company set out to reduce its level of flaring in the Bakken.

Flaring in the Bakken is a dynamic problem, Lance Langford, Statoil’s vice president of Bakken Development and Production in North America, said in a statement. New wells initially overwhelm existing pipeline infrastructure, and because wells come into production all around the formation, flaring continually moves around, Langford explained. That meant that a system to capture the gas that would have been flared needed to be mobile. Statoil sought a solution that would increase efficiency, increase production and reduce the company’s environmental footprint.

General Electric Oil & Gas Inc. (GE) is another company that recognized and was worried about the amount of flaring in the Bakken. GE believed that the technology needed for a solution existed already, according to Commodities Now, so the company began working with Statoil and Ferus Natural Gas Fuels on solving the problem.

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CNG in a Box. In the Bakken, Statoil has partnered with GE and Ferus to develop a mobile system to capture the field gas that would be flared, convert into CNG and deliver the CNG to its drilling fleet for fuel. Photo courtesy of Jay Pickthorn/AP/Statoil. Source: Statoil

The collaboration between the companies recently resulted in a mobile container system capable of capturing and compressing the natural gas that would otherwise have been flared. Because the container system is mobile, the captured and compressed natural gas (CNG) can be transported to other locations, where it can be utilized as a fuel. The system is therefore able to reduce emissions, with the added benefit of maximizing energy efficiency by utilizing fuel that would otherwise be wasted, according to Langford.


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