Quote:
Originally Posted by comrade
What about the flaring of sour gas? Surely that's a negative (in that it produces SO2 and burns large quantities of propane).
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I am not too sure about the propane comment. From what I know of flaring it is done for two reasons, the first is during the test phase of a new well. The well will be opened to test pressure before it is tied in to a pipeline. The flowing gas will be burnt off to prevent it being released into the environment. This happens to both sweet and sour wells. The other reason to flare is to get rid of an unwanted byproduct. ie. if you separate the products and end up with a small amount of sour gas that isn't worth shipping you may burn it off on site.
In both cases you are disposing of a flammable gas so I don't think you would need to add propane to the mix to get rid of it. From what I read though, the amount of flaring has been going down in Alberta, even in absolute terms as the amount of drilling goes up. As to the SO2 I don't really know much about it with regard to volume produced or effect that it may have on the environment, something to read up on I suppose.
I am not intimately familiar with flaring though so take the above with a grain of salt.