Wow, we just got a delivery of LP gas, which we use to heat with.

[Ikonoklast]

64. If there is no pipeline connection to those wellheads, gas gets flared off.

It would be prohibitively expensive to build temporary natgas storage facilities for each wellhead until the pipeline hookup is ready

The resulting costs involved would push the price of that reclaimed gas out of sight.


Gas gets flared until the pipelines being built are connected to the wellheads, the pipeline build-out is seriously lagging behind production in the Bakken because of the shorter working season to accomplish pipeline installation.

The producers would gladly have that gas in a pipeline instead of flaring it, but there is no practical economic way of dealing with it other than flaring it off until the needed pipeline infrastructure is in place.


In the Utica and Marcellus gas fields in SE Ohio, drillers have slowed down their schedule until the main and lateral pipeline construction is finished, around the end of next year.


They are not doing it to keep prices high. If they wanted to keep prices high, they wouldn't be drilling the wells in the first place.

Prices recently spiked due to commodity speculators. Look at natgas futures trading on the NYMEX.