Study shows Bakken natural gas flare satellite images aren't accurate

Satellite images that circulated the Internet more than two years ago purported to show natural gas flares lighting up the Bakken Oil Patch as bright as a major metropolitan city were “highly processed,” “manipulated” and “inaccurate,” researchers at the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center said Wednesday.

Chris Zygarlicke, the EERC’s deputy associate director for research, said he took an interest in the images because the science involved aligns closely with his background. He said having driven through western North Dakota and the Oil Patch, he believed the images were inaccurately portraying the area.

“There’s no way that we’re lighting up the land like you see people talking about everywhere,” he said.

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B&A Global Energy sets sights on ending flaring in Bakken

Photo by Jonathan Pezza / Special to The Press Jack Kelley, president and CEO of B&A Global Energy of Tulsa, Okla., left, speaks with Michael Wu, inventor of the Energy Capturing Operating System (ECOS) at a well site in Mongolia in this undated photo provided by the company.
Photo by Jonathan Pezza / Special to The Press
Jack Kelley, president and CEO of B&A Global Energy of Tulsa, Okla., left, speaks with Michael Wu, inventor of the Energy Capturing Operating System (ECOS) at a well site in Mongolia in this undated photo provided by the company.

Jack Kelley and Skip Bennett are an unassuming duo with a big idea.

The entrepreneurs, together with a Taiwanese inventor and engineer, have a plan to capture natural gas, eliminate flaring at the wellhead, create a viable commodity from that gas, and pay both energy companies and royalty owners for their share.

B&A Global Energy, a small company based in Tulsa, Okla., has acquired the rights to the Energy Capturing Operating System (ECOS), a portable refinery able to be placed at a well site. The ECOS captures and processes methane gas produced in the hydraulic fracturing process into liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“This is a game-changing technology to the oil and gas business,” said Kelley, B&A Global’s president and CEO and a 25-year veteran of the energy industry who is also a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and a licensed architect.

B&A Global wants to bring its ECOS technology to the U.S. — specifically to North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’ Eagle Ford shale formations — after witnessing the technology work in Asia.

“We have chosen the Bakken as our focus,” said Bennett, B&A Global’s board chairman and founder.

The idea, they say, is simple.

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