Oil Well Flares and Their Potential Value
油井天然氣不再白白燒掉
By Clifford Krauss

WATFORD CITY, North Dakota – Viewed from outer space, the 1,500 blazing oil well flares burning off excess natural gas in the plains of North Dakota shine more brilliantly than the lights of Minneapolis hundreds of kilometers away.
從外太空俯視地球，北達科他州平原上1500座噴火油井正在燃燒過剩的天然氣，火光衝天，遠比數百公里外明尼亞波利市的燈光還要耀眼。

The gas being burned in the Bakken field is a byproduct of oil drilling in areas where there are too few gas-gathering lines and few limits on drilling. In total, the excess gas could heat a million homes, releasing roughly six million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – roughly equivalent to three medium-size coal-fired power plants.
這些天然氣是當地貝肯油頁岩區鑽探油井的副產品；這裡的天然氣收集管線甚少，對鑽井的限制也少。過剩的天然氣總量能夠供100萬個家庭取暖用；每年約釋放600萬噸二氧化碳進入大氣，約相當於三座中型燃煤發電廠的排放量。

That level of emissions is three times as great as only two years ago, outraging environmentalists, encouraging landowners to sue oil companies and prompting calls for tighter regulations.
目前排放量已是兩年前的三倍，惹火環保人士，促使地主控告油公司，並激起要求政府嚴加規範的呼聲。

But for A. Lance Langford, Statoil’s vice president for Bakken development and production, and other energy executives, the flaring problem can be the mother of invention. “You take a problem and you turn it into an opportunity,” he said. “We’re trying to think outside the box.”
但對挪威國家石油公司負責貝肯油田開發及生產的副總裁藍佛德，以及其他能源業主管來說，油井噴火問題可能正是創新之母。藍佛德說：「你抓住問題，化為機會。我們正以創新的態度來思考。」

Oil companies are intensifying their efforts to stem the flaring, like building more pipelines and gas processing plants, planning new fertilizer factories that use natural gas as a feedstock and converting rigs and other equipment to use natural gas as a fuel.
油公司正集中力量阻止油氣燃燒，如鋪設管線及建立天然氣處理廠，規畫新的肥料廠把天然氣用為原料，以及改裝鑽油機等設備使之可以天然氣為燃料。

Statoil, the Norwegian oil giant, is teaming up with General Electric here on a low-cost prototype it hopes will be used as far away as Africa and Asia, where gas now flared could be gathered for cooking and other uses.
規模甚大的挪威國家石油公司與奇異公司在此地合組團隊，研發一套低成本的設備原型，希望未來最遠能運用到非洲與亞洲的產油區，收集目前白白燒掉的天然氣，用於炊煮等用途。

The first step is to strip out valuable natural gas liquids like butane and propane, which can be used for petrochemical production. The liquids can then be put in pressurized tanks and delivered by truck to processing plants. The rest of the gas can be compressed and stored in what G.E. calls “C.N.G. in a box.”
第一步是把丁烷與丙烷等有價值的天然氣液體抽出，作為石化原料。再把這種液體放入壓縮槽，用卡車運往處理工廠。剩下的氣體可加以壓縮並貯存在奇異公司所謂的「壓縮天然氣箱」中。

The device was originally designed to be a mobile natural gas station to fill up cars, trucks and buses. But Statoil plans to use the boxes to fuel drilling rigs that have already been converted to replace 40 percent of the diesel they burn with gas.
這套設備原為移動式天然氣加氣站，為汽車、卡車與巴士加氣。但挪威石油計畫用來為鑽油機提供燃料；這些鑽油機原本燒柴油，經改裝後四成柴油可以天然氣取代。

By Statoil’s calculations, if all the rigs in the Bakken were converted to run even partly on natural gas, more than 1.7 million cubic meters of natural gas – a fifth of the gas now being flared – could be saved every day.
據挪威石油計算，如果貝肯油區所有鑽油機都經改裝，即便只用天然氣為部分燃料，每天便能保留住170萬立方公尺的天然氣，相當於目前燃燒量的1/5。

Other companies have their own plans to make the gas more of an economic asset. The railroad giant BNSF, which now ships the majority of Bakken crude oil out of the state, is preparing to test North Dakota’s abundant and cheap natural gas as an alternative fuel to far more expensive diesel for its locomotives. Two companies are building giant fertilizer plants, representing nearly $3 billion in investments in North Dakota, which would use the stats’s natural gas as a feedstock and supply farmers in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Canada.
其他公司也各有計畫，使天然氣成為更有經濟價值的資產。貝肯油區所產原油主要由鐵路巨擘美國伯靈頓北方聖太菲鐵路運輸公司 （BNSF）運出北達科他州，該公司目前正準備嘗試以當地豐沛且便宜的天然氣作為火車頭的燃料，以替代貴了許多的柴油。另有兩家公司正投資近30億美元在北達科他興建巨型肥料廠，以天然氣為原料，為南北達科他、明尼蘇達、蒙大拿等州及加拿大的農民提供肥料。

Natural gas flaring around the world results in emissions of 400 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the World Bank. That is equivalent to the emissions of 77 million cars, and much of that wasted gas is produced in countries where natural gas could provide power to people who subsist without electricity.
根據世界銀行的統計，全球放任油氣井噴火，一年所造成的二氧化碳排放量達四億噸。這相當於7700萬輛汽車的排量；而且許多任由這些天然氣平白燒掉的產油國，都能利用這些天然氣發電，為國內無電可用的民眾提供電力。

Michael Hosford at G.E. Oil and Gas, said he hoped to quickly work out the small flaws in G.E.’s venture with Statoil and expand it globally. “It’s not North Dakota-bound; it is all over the world,” he said. “It’s China; it’s Nigeria. It’s very much an international concern.”
奇異油氣公司主管賀思佛表示，他希望奇異與挪威石油設立的合資事業，很快就能把新設備的一些小瑕疵解決掉，並推廣到全球。他說：「這不是為了北達科他，而是為全世界，為中國，為奈及利亞；這是一件國際間高度關注的事。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/business/energy-environment/applying-creativity-to-a-byproduct-of-oil-drilling-in-north-dakota.html

2014-01-28聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 任中原譯 原文參見紐時週報八版下