TAREA

Petroleum Engineering Department/ University of North Dakota

REDUCING FLARING AT THE BAKKEN FORMATION

Progress Report #1

Leopoldo Alicante

1023091

Fabian Becerra

0965142

Dr. Minou Rabiei

September 30, 2015

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Objective 3

Completed Research 4

Schedule 4

More Research 5

Anticipated Results 5

References 5

Introduction

This project is focused on the possible techniques which can be applied to favor the collection of natural gas at the Bakken to reduce flaring. Flare at the Bakken has been increasing since the last couple of years doubling in production. Talking about the economy, flaring is a huge issue. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says the United States flared 260,394 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2013 at an average price about $3.71 per mm BTU. Base on this number, it can be concluded that the nation lost $995 million worth of natural gas due to flaring last year and those are only the reported and estimated numbers. (Styles, G., and Rozenfeld, M., 2014). In North Dakota, at the Bakken formation, in 2014 flaring counted as the 37.5% of total natural gas production in the US (Chatsko, M. 2014). Also, flaring is an environmental problem not only at the Bakken but all over most of the rigs. Natural gas contains compounds such as methane and ethane. Methane is excessively more lethal to the Earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide. So it is important to avoid releasing natural gas to the atmosphere. For these two main reasons flaring at the Bakken needs to be diminished to its minimum expression. So the procedure of this research project mainly consists of collecting data from literature review of existing studies. By doing this, the good and bad solutions will stand out so they clearly can be isolated to promote a robust possible solution to flaring at the Bakken formation.

Objective

The stated objective of this study was to analyze alternative uses of the excess flared gas of the Bakken. Clearly this main objective has not changed after the research was done. This project will show alternative solutions for the excess gas taking into consideration the different aspects for all the parties involved in this matter.

Completed Research

According to the schedule at this point of the project, data should be collected and reviewed. However, due to recent changes on the class schedule the research has been delayed a few days especially on the review portion of it. Even though the project is delayed, some of the information needed is gathered, two main points of stood out to lead this research to a specific direction. First, the main finding is the lack

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