Natural Gas Released From Fracking, Burned and Wasted
From IVN
Gas flaring seemed to be an issue relegated to the past or to countries disinclined to respect the environment. However, the recent exploitation of shale oil enabled by the improvement of extraction techniques have brought back this issue to the center of United States’ environmental and energy policies.
Gas flaring is the practice of burning natural gas associated with crude oil during extraction in an oil field. All too often, the natural gas released from fracking is burned, wasted, and damagingly released into the atmosphere — about 400 million tons of carbon emissions per year globally.
Every year, the equivalent of 30 percent of E.U. and 25 percent of the U.S. gas consumption is flared globally. This practice has become such a concern that in 2002, the World Bank initiated the Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) partnership between oil companies and countries with the objective of reducing this practice.
