Not everyone a fan of oil boom in ND - "flaring off a third of the Bakken's natural gas"

[Coyotl]

This tidbit caught my eye "flaring off a third of the Bakken's natural gas" and is is simple alarming to me. Are we trying to heat up the planet?

What is the sum BTU output of burning natural gas without extraction of it's energy?

Not everyone a fan of oil boom in North Dakota
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/not-everyone-a-fan-of-oil-boom-in-north-dakota-220467521.html

.... The 62-year-old rancher-ranger is a rare outspoken opponent of the oil boom that has fattened up the State of North Dakota's bottom line. Fed up with the traffic, road construction and influx of what he describes as rednecks, he's now trying to delay any further fracking in the region, especially as oil companies begin to exhaust private holdings and eye up 1.1 million acres of public land.

"None of us would oppose some oil development. None of us would oppose 50 rigs on the land," he said. But there are more than 200 rigs drilling horizontal wells into North Dakota's Bakken shale right now -- and each one must be served by dozens of trips by trucks delivering water and sand for hydraulic fracturing and hauling away saltwater to disposal sites.

.........

Outside the region, the exploitation of the Bakken shale can be seen as a necessary evil -- a scarring of the landscape rendered tolerable by the U.S. need for self-sufficiency in oil production.

Heiser rejects this argument, noting the U.S. already consumes more than a fifth of the world's oil and has made no real effort to use less of it. He said North Dakotans are losing their reputation for being sensible and prudent. How else, he asks, can anyone justify flaring off a third of the Bakken's natural gas, all in a rush to get at the oil below? .....

[Coyotl]

1. evening kick