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BP America clamping down on natural gas well ‘flaring’
The Associated Press
Energy giant BP America is experimenting with a drilling technique that eliminates the raw flame that burns off methane and helps get natural gas flowing.
Officials with the company in Illinois, which is responsible for some 1,100 coal-bed methane wells in southern Colorado’s La Plata County, say the technique would cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.
BP spokesman Dan Larson said the company began using a well completion technique in Wyoming four years ago that cut flaring in half. He said the company estimates that in a year, the new technique saves the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere as would result from taking all the cars in Wyoming off the road for a year and a half.
“The company recognizes our main products, oil and gas, cause problems,” Larson told the Durango Herald. “But without energy, the economy stops.” Flaring helps flow Flaring helps get methane flowing from a coalbed well. BP engineer Phil Loftin said coal beds where methane is trapped 1,800 feet to 3,200 feet below the surface are not very permeable, so they are fractured, or “frac’ed,” to get the gas flowing.
Loftin said frac’ing a coal formation 200 feet to 300 feet on either side of a well bore helps the trapped gas flow upward. But fluid and sand used as part of the process must be cleaned out and when that happens, gas becomes mixed in. That’s the amount that must be burned off for safety reasons.
For the flareless alternative, workers pump gas instead of air down the well bore. Gas is not flammable until it is mixed with air.
“It’s actually safer to pump down natural gas instead of air,” Loftin said.
In the flareless wells, gas returning to the surface with fluids and sand is separated with new equipment and cycled back through the well bore or sent off in a pipeline to be sold.
“The oil and gas industry has shown itself to be very inventive and technologically savvy,” said Dan Randolph of the San Juan Citizens Alliance. BP completed three flareless wells last year in a pilot program in La Plata County, and has completed eight more this year. Larson said BP is drilling about 50 new coalbed methane wells each year in the county.
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