On NPR this morning there was a report on natural gas fires in Nigera as one of the greatest contributors to environmental damage — including global warming.
The first picture is from space, where you can see the natural gas flares…Â
When drilling for oil, there are often natural gas pockets in the earth that can either be stored (and sold) or just burned off — which is what they do in Nigera because natural gas is not as profitable as oil.
This map is a composite of the growth of natural gas flares in Nigeria. The amount of acid rain that falls in the regions affected by the amount of pollution in the air is quite large. If you don’t know the effects of acid rain, just add some sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides to a bucket of water and then use in your garden.
And if you want to see where race, class gender, and the environment come together in one place with devastating consequences, just look at this slide show from the National Geographic. Â
–PK
9 thoughts on “Killing Us Not-So-Softly”
Comments are closed.
This was something I did not know about. Thanks for pointing this out, Py.
Oh my god…that’s just horrid. Ever since I read “Half of a Yellow Sun”, I feel like I know at least a little bit more about Nigeria, but mostly what I know is that I wouldn’t want to live there, and I feel so badly for the poor folks that do. The rich ones are probably fine. Except that the acid rain falls on them as well.
I get the feeling that the rich folks who benefit from all the oil riches don’t live anywhere near Nigeria.
Such a sad state of affairs…
What is the quality of the gas from these oil fields? A lot of gas from oil fields is of such poor quality that it cannot be used commercially and therefore flared. Some of it has H2S or hydrogen sulfide, which needs to be flared because it will kill you. I know there is greed and corruption in Nigeria. Look at where all the Internet scams are coming from. But sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to get the whole truth.
But just look at the amount of natural gas that being burned off. That’s quite a lot!
According to the NPR report, the air quality is really horrid, and there’s also acid rain to deal with.
The whole process of getting oil out of the ground is nasty business, but when you factor in the by-products of that process, it’s even worse.
First the money scandals now natural gas fires. What as shame!
Pipeline natural gas is about 1,000 btu/cuft. Anything less than 500 btu/cuft is very low quality. I agree that they should do something with it besides flaring. Maybe truck it to remote poor villages. Natural gas also has 20 time the global warming potential as CO2. Flaring it will contribute many times less than venting it.
Wow there is alot of technical stuff that I don’t understand about the natural gas processing. Human nature is to tell a story from only one perspective. I have to wonder what the whole picture looks likes, not just peices of the story. My heart goes out the people and animals who are suffering. The land being polluted the greed that causes such things like this to happen. Who, what and why is this happening, how and when can it be fixed?
Wow, how interesting. Thanks for posting about this.