Energy Producers Waste More Than $40 billion

Making Sour Gas Into Sweet Energy

A 2004 report by the World Bank provided the shocking news: Every year, energy producers waste more than $40 billion by burning off gas at their oil fields and sending it into the atmosphere.

The World Bank’s latest statistics estimate that energy producers annually waste 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas—gas that could be transformed into usable energy—by flaring it. This is a tremendous waste. It’s also harmful to the environment. Such massive flaring sends an estimated 350 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, the World Bank says. The 2004 World Bank report, which was conducted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates that, in 2003, 5.5% of global gas production—and 27% of US gas consumption—was lost to flaring.

The Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership—run by the World Bank—reports that global flaring levels have remained steady for the past 20 years, despite the many individual government- and company-led efforts that have successfully reduced the practice at individual sites. These efforts have produced a limited impact, mainly because global oil production has increased, the partnership says. There is hope, though, and it comes in the form of microturbines. Several energy producers across the US are teaming with microturbine manufacturers, and research centers on pilot programs designed to transform into usable power, the sour gas that oil fields flare, vent, and waste.

One of the recent successes took place in the tiny town—population of 88, according to the 2000 US Census—of Newburg, ND. For nearly two years, Amerada Hess Corp., a global energy producer that runs oil fields across the world, ran a pair of Capstone-manufactured microturbines at an oil field in this town in western North Dakota. The goal of the pilot program was to test the economic sense of generating power with a microturbine, fueled with the sour natural gas that is produced, and usually flared, along with oil.

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