Why do oil rigs have a flame

Mar 17 Flaring for safety By burning excess natural gas, flaring protects against the dangers of over-pressuring industrial equipment. Flaring for disposal One of the main reasons for gas flaring is the disposal and burning of natural gas as waste. Flaring for remote locations When petroleum crude oil is extracted and produced from onshore or offshore oil wells, natural gas associated with the oil is also brought to the surface.

Flaring for economics There is a significant gap between oil and natural gas prices. Category: News By Fluenta March 17, Author: Fluenta. Related posts. That lost gas could have powered all the homes in Chicago for a year, according to the report. Oil companies burn off natural gas for several reasons: sometimes to prevent a dangerous buildup of methane at a drilling site, but more often because the companies do not have the equipment or the financial incentive to capture and sell it.

Besides examining how much taxpayers could be losing from gas flaring each year, the report highlights how little is known about the extent of the problem. The federal Bureau of Land Management BLM held a hearing on the issue last week, and the agency continues to evaluate tighter rules to prevent the waste of gas on leased federal land.

And officials in North Dakota, which until now has been relatively tolerant of flaring, are stepping up efforts to prevent it. Governor Jack Dalrymple, speaking Wednesday at a conference on the oil industry , said his state no would longer grant oil developers permission to flare gas for more than one year.

Gas flaring occurs worldwide, and the United States falls far behind Russia and Nigeria in the World Bank's rankings of nations that waste the most natural gas. But even as the U. Low natural gas prices in the U. From an emissions standpoint, flaring is considered better than venting straight into the atmosphere, so excess gas is burned.

Companies using federal land can get approval from the Bureau of Land Management for various types of gas venting or flaring, and no payments are due on that "authorized" lost gas. But a royalty—at a rate of Recent analyses of just how much gas is being wasted nationwide, however, are difficult to come by. Data from the U. Office of Natural Resources Revenue ONRR , which tracks and collects royalties due from companies that mine resources on public land, show that the amount of gas lost to unauthorized flaring and venting increased more than fold from through The sharp increase, particularly starting in , comes primarily from New Mexico.

The state lacks infrastructure to handle the gas associated with oil development, according to the BLM, and the gas itself is poor quality that cannot go directly into a pipeline.

Companies themselves report the numbers on unauthorized flaring, and ONRR has limited means to verify such reports. Besides using data mining to fact-check reported numbers and placing on-site auditors at larger drilling companies, the ONRR has been issuing more frequent penalties in recent years to companies for reporting violations. And that has been fairly successful," Etchart said. The amount of gas flared without permits on federal land—about five million mcf thousand cubic feet in , or enough to meet the annual needs of about 50, American homes —is significant, but just a small fraction of what is presumed to be lost on both public and private lands.

The Energy Information Administration's latest figure, from , puts that total amount at The WVP cited a Government Accountability Office report that used data to estimate that as much as 5 percent of all natural gas produced on public land was flared or vented. Using that estimate and ONRR data on total gas produced, the report estimated that at least But applying a general percentage based on a analysis to all production leaves the report open to second-guessing from critics.

Sgamma pointed out that royalties from produced oil and gas far exceed those from lost gas, and noted that even if that lost gas had been captured, it would not be assured a certain price on the market because supply is so abundant and prices are low.

Ross Lane of WVP acknowledged that government analysis of the problem needs updating, but affirmed the report's conclusions. You're not going to purposefully burn a potential revenue stream," said Jack Ekstrom, vice president of corporate relations for Whiting Petroleum , which operates drilling operations in North Dakota, Colorado, and elsewhere across the U.

Residual natural gas or hydrocarbons are typically vented to the atmosphere or processed further while the oil goes to storage tanks. Alternatively, when oil wells lack the infrastructure required to recover the natural gas, typically because the wells are in remote locations, much of the associated gas is flared as waste gas.

At refineries, the facility may consist of a flare system with many branch lines connecting secondary process units to the main flare header.

Throughout this system, the waste gas is recycled through a vapor recovery system where the gas is recovered and returned to the process. As previously indicated, the thermal flow meter is not traditionally suitable for accurate emission measurement or obtaining a mass balance for the main flare header due to the extreme variations in gas composition.

However, thermal mass flow meters can be used in refineries or chemical plants to discern which particular operation is sending flow to the flare. The regulations require that all flares, except for emergency flares, be continuously monitored for gas discharges to the flare. As previously indicated, thermal flowmeters are not suitable for this application due to the potential for significant gas composition modifications. Atmospheric storage tanks are large aboveground containers commonly used in oil and gas production, containing liquids of oil or gas condensate.

Storage tank emissions from venting are mostly volatile organic compounds VOC and considered hazardous air pollutants HAP. Regulatory agencies may require that the emissions be quantified and reported. Additionally, reporting tank venting for greenhouse gas emissions is required under 40 CFR part More information on using thermal mass flow meters to measure flashing and working losses of oil and gas atmospheric storage tank emissions are on Atmospheric Storage Tank Vent.

In our next post on flare flow measurement, we explore various flow measurement technologies for flare gas measurement, including ultrasonic flow meters, averaging pitot tube, and thermal mass flow meters. Perhaps this video and articles may interest you:. Bob Steinberg is the president of Sage Metering Inc.

Steinberg has started three successful enterprises and has over 20 years of management, sales, and marketing experience in the process industry. In addition, he has had extensive experience managing, supporting, and training industrial rep organizations, specifically in the thermal mass flowmeter industry. Steinberg can be reached at bob sagemetering.

I am conducting some research on platform flares and keen to have some data on the largest platform flare used offshore. I believe it was the N Rankine platform with a throughput of around 1.