The British researcher was mystified, former US Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) said. He was studying a satellite nighttime photo of the US and could quickly identify Chicago, St. Louis, and other metropolises from their lights.
But the researcher was mystified by what he termed a "mystery city," which apparently was in western North Dakota and eastern Montana, he told Dorgan during a long-distance telephone call.
The two men finally decided the night lights came from the flaring of natural gas associated with Bakken shale oil production, Dorgan said during a May 15 American Petroleum Institute briefing on 2012 election issues.
Three Democratic leaders on the US House Energy and Commerce Committee asked Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) to schedule a hearing on the matter. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the full committee's ranking minority member; and two subcommittees' top Democrats, Bobby L. Rush (Ill.) and Diana DeGette (Colo.), said tight oil producers continue to flare or vent associated dry gas because it's uneconomic at current prices.
"As oil production has boomed, so has the amount of gas produced, but industry has not developed the infrastructure necessary to process and transport much of the gas to market," they told Upton in a May 14 letter. "This lack of infrastructure, combined with historically low natural gas prices, has made it cheaper for industry to burn the gas than capture and sell it."
The World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership reported on May 3 that the US shale boom caused global gas flaring to rise in 2011, reversing a downward trend, the three Democrats noted. The US now falls within the global Top 10, they added.
OGJ tried to reach Lynn D. Helms, oil and gas division director in North Dakota's Department of Natural Resources, for the state's perspective, but could not since he was preparing to co-host the 20th Williston Basin Petroleum Conference May 22-24 in Bismarck.
LNG exports
At a recent Brookings Institution briefing, however, experts suggested that encouraging US LNG exports was one way to create more demand, increase prices, and improve pipeline economics for gas now being flared.
When he spoke at Deloitte's 2012 Washington Energy Conference on May 21, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said gas export pipeline proposals with the necessary financing and wherewithal would be considered promptly. "To the extent the companies are willing, we'd be the first to step up and make it possible," he said.
Waxman hasn't taken a position on LNG exports, according to his press secretary. DeGette's told OGJ that the Coloradoan has consistently voted against LNG export bans.
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