Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Oil Companies Are Sued for Waste of Natural Gas

In North Dakota, 10 class-action lawsuits were filed against some of the United States’ largest oil companies. These companies are being sued for flaring natural gas when they extracting oil from the ground. Flaring is when companies do not have an economic incentive to build necessary gas pipelines, so they purposely burn cheap gas bubbles that go to the top of the pipe with the expensive oil. Although flaring is less harmful to the environment than releasing raw natural gas into the atmosphere, the quantities of burned gas are so large that they do have a strong impact on the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. However, after the lawsuit, some companies have started to plan and make efforts towards producing new pipelines or finding new ways to extract oil while reducing the gas flared. It is essential for these companies to recognize that our current environment is suffering, and  that even abundant gas should be conserved, because we don’t fully understand the effects that even these “cheap” gases have on our planet.

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