Re:As oil and gas exports surge, West Texas becomes the worl...
by pjc50 on Monday December 31, 2018 @05:41AM
(#18793977)
> a bunch of rigs would just not be built, given that in so many instances gases are co-existing with the liquid which is the target resource.
Yeah, that's a feature not a bug. Carbon-taxing the methane flaring would be a decent compromise to start with though, but I'm not sure whether it would be pricey enough to make a difference and (as you point out) it's quite easy to evade when flaring gas at the point of production.
It's also a strangely non-joined-up market when one set of people are performing fracking specifically to get at the gas and another set of people are flaring it as a worthless byproduct. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on gas exploration until it's not worthless?
(A key point to remember in exploration: just because it's there doesn't mean it has to be extracted now. Obviously the individual firm is going to want to do it immediately, but for the planet as a whole or even the individual extracting country the priority is not the same)
Yeah, that's a feature not a bug. Carbon-taxing the methane flaring would be a decent compromise to start with though, but I'm not sure whether it would be pricey enough to make a difference and (as you point out) it's quite easy to evade when flaring gas at the point of production.
It's also a strangely non-joined-up market when one set of people are performing fracking specifically to get at the gas and another set of people are flaring it as a worthless byproduct. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on gas exploration until it's not worthless?
(A key point to remember in exploration: just because it's there doesn't mean it has to be extracted now. Obviously the individual firm is going to want to do it immediately, but for the planet as a whole or even the individual extracting country the priority is not the same)