Why do oil rigs at sea have a constant flame burning on top of them? Natural gas? And why couldn’t it be collected as well instead of wasting it?
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Yes it is natural gas. Oil reservoirs usually come with an associated pocket of natural gas. It could be collected if they wanted to but often its not economical to build the additional infrastructure required to capture and transport it so they just burn it off.
As oil is produced from wells, natural gas comes out of the oil. Exactly how much comes out of the oil depends on mainly the density of the oil but there is ALWAYS some amount of associated gas production. Because flowing the gas with the oil will limit how much oil you can flow it is more economic to burn it through what is called a flare. Some places however have banned flaring of gas and the companies have to either pipe it to shore or reinject it into the reservoir. Hope this helps
It’s an emergency fail safe. Natural gas is a pressure pocket that keeps a lot of liquid at bay. If they were drilling and siphoning gas what would happen if the driver failed? The gas would expand and create a massive pressure expanse. It only has one way to go: right to the rig. They burn it to let some escape easily and keep things in check.
No profit in it. You can actually take a tanker truck to oil fields in Texas and New Mexico and they will pay you to take it away.
It’s natural gas. It’s not economical to sell so they burn it. In 100 years it’s a thing the human race is going to view as a huge and unforgivable crime but the people that did it will be gone and their kids will be rich
On the rig I work on, natural gas IS collected and stored for offload, we still have a flare tower with a constant flame as a safety mechanism. If the process becomes unstable (often during start up or shut down) and the pressure get above the set pressures, the excess gas is sent to the flare to be safely burnt. There is a constant incentive to minimise flaring because it is just burning profit. But safety comes first, if I have to flare it, I will.
Someone mentioned PRV’s (pressure relief valves) and of course we have those too but they are an absolute last line of defense for when the pressures reach the design limit of the system they are protecting. Lifting PRV’s is a sign you have lost control and in my workplace we require a shutdown and full system inspection if a RV lifts
I thought it was burned so they knew it wasn’t building up somewhere waiting to explode. Is there any truth to that?
Natural gas is a mixture of different molecules. It’s primarily Methane (CH4), and a much smaller amount of other bigger hydrocarbon molecules like C2H8 or C3H10, plus mixtures of other stuff like CO2, nitrogen etc.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, and is thought to have a much higher impact on climate change than regular carbon dioxide, on a per-unit basis. Releasing it directly into the atmosphere could actually cause a higher increase in net greenhouse effect, than to simply burn it.
Burning natural gas results in the flame, plus CO2 and Water, and a smaller amount of some other substances. It’s a little counter intuitive, but in the long run it could be better for the environment to burn that natural gas ‘waste’ than to try and collect it and ship it, or to just release it into the atmosphere. Of course, it would be best to avoid releasing it into the atmosphere in the first place through drilling, but if you’re gonna be pumping oil from the ground anyway, you gotta do something.
Was at work. One of the managers had a tv in his office. Not much work got done that day.
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