
In Booming Oil Field, Natural Gas Can Be Free - prostoalex
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-booming-oilfield-natural-gas-can-be-free-11545906601
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npongratz
Enough flaring that the fields show up at night via satellite, rivaling some
cities:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a-mysterious-
patch-of-light-shows-up-in-the-north-dakota-dark)

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phil21
One of the more interesting crypto mining ideas I've been exposed to (and it's
been quite a few...) is co-locating shipping containers with natural gas
generators plus compute at oil fields flaring off natural gas.

The idea was the companies would potentially even pay you for taking it, since
most states(?) will charge you some nominal "environmental" fee for flaring
it.

I have no idea if anyone actually went through with the idea, but it certainly
was discussed quite a bit a couple years ago.

It's an exceedingly interesting use case. Effectively free raw energy, but
almost no proper connectivity. Very few use cases for such a situation, but
even a 3G modem is fine for mining. I'm not certain what other uses one could
come up with for on-site use of this energy...

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samstave
Would this be the same flaring off that one sees on Oil Rigs? -- I wonder if
@RDL would be inclined to speak on the idea of floating a data-barge comprised
of the sea-based-data-tubes that Gates has been funding (Project Natik)

[https://gizmodo.com/microsofts-newest-data-center-is-a-
giant...](https://gizmodo.com/microsofts-newest-data-center-is-a-giant-metal-
can-at-t-1826606291)

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TheSpiceIsLife
A guy a went to trade school with, two decades ago, used to tells stories of
drilling for oil in South Australia and finding nat gas, more nat gas, and nat
gas again.

They’d just cap the well and move on.

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whatshisface
This situation will not last forever because new chemical plants and pipelines
will be built. Typically the natural gas is processed into things like plastic
pellets that are then shipped to China for assembly into goods to be shipped
back. It is easy to see why reducing fossil fuel use is so hard when it acts
like the juice of life for economies near the places that have it.

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gleglegle
Not true. Flaring of natural gas will happen until it’s prohibited, as it has
since the inception of the industry. Building pipelines and chemical plants is
not viable in most of the cases where gas is flared.

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jackfoxy
I'm pretty sure it's a safety issue. You can flare the natural gas, or you can
collect it, if it's economic to do so, but you can't just let it accumulate in
the general vicinity. Boom.

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d1tchdigger
Not only that, but poisonous gases (mainly H2S) are also present in natural
gas, which can kill you in concentrations as low as 100 ppm, which, in
percentage terms, is 0.01%. This gas is heavier than air, so it also tends to
concentrate in low lying areas.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/4ZTV5c](https://outline.com/4ZTV5c)

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ChuckMcM
Given the excess pipeline capacity to Mexico from the article I'm guessing
building a chemical plant in Mexico would be good thing, except it probably
takes 3 - 5 years before you can bring a plant online and who knows what gas
prices or demand will be like 5 years from now.

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Nasrudith
Disclaimer - couldn't read more than an introductory two paragraphs - this may
be addressed in text.

I wonder why they don't just start stockpiling liquefied natural gas and wait
for the value to eventually rise. Even if prices don't rise sufficiently to
sell it could potentially be vertically integrated to substitute for burning
coal for input heat in oil refineries. Perhaps it is related to the
liquification process costs plus storage.

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D_Alex
One big problem is that the production usually starts at a high rate, then
declines quite rapidly - say 20-50% per year - for the remainder of the field
life.

If you design for the peak rate, the plant will be expensive and
underutilized. If you design for a lower rate, the plant will economically
insignificant and you still have to flare a lot of the gas initially.

~~~
Nasrudith
Ah so even if they could make some sort of mobile liquifier (no guarantees of
something sufficently big like that being energy efficient net let alone
financially a good investment) it would be a logistical pain.

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cat199
"The resulting greenhouse-gas emissions are equivalent to the daily exhaust
emitted by about 2.7 million cars"

why i find those seriously concerned about carbon footprint from eating meat a
bit strange..

