Oil companies wasting natural gas, emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases

The New York Times recently looked at data on the way energy companies deal with natural gas in the three largest U.S. shale oil fields — the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin fields in Texas, and the Bakken field in North Dakota that straddles the border with Canada. Oil drilling companies, from the largest like BP to the smallest like Exco, flare and vent the natural gas that comes up the well as a byproduct of the fracking process. The headline assertion about flaring in general: "The World Bank estimates that flaring last year emitted more than 350 million tons of carbon dioxide globally, equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions of almost 75 million cars."