North Dakota natural gas fields can be seen from space

NPR's Robert Krulwich circled this bright spot on a night-time satellite image of the United States. As Krulwich points out, this cluster of lights is new — it wasn't there in 2005. And it's not a city.

Instead, that bright spot is a shining reminder of the natural gas boom. What you're seeing are the lights from drilling rigs and flares burning gas.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: economics • Everything Happens in the Midwest • fossil fuels • fracking • natural gas • Science

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tylerkaraszewski

Based on the image in the post, it looks like pretty much every little tiny town in the remotest parts of the desert or the plains can be seen from space. So I’m not sure that “can be seen from space” really implies anything in particular.
- jandrese
  
  The incredible thing about it is that it is a splotch of light bigger than Chicago.
- mtdna
  
  And it emerged suddenly.
- nowimnothing
  
  Yeah I thought I remembered reading that all the city lights from space type pictures were fake in some way.
  - nowimnothing
    
    I was probably thinking of something like this: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Lights/
    So it is not real as in a visible light photograph, but it is a real in a composite image from special cameras kind of way.
mtdna

It’s kind of the opposite of the North Korea phenomenon, where it’s totally dark from orbit.
- Jake0748
  
  Wow – I’d never seen that before. So, if nothing else, at least N. Korea is good for doing astronomy.
  - digi_owl
    
    Only if every new find i dedicated to Ill in some way.
sincarne

I don’t know for sure, but I think the popularity of this tid-bit can be traced back to Dr Drang’s site. I know a few political blogs picked it up.

http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/12/sans-taste/
M.A. DeLuca

Better this than the way it looks in North Korea.
- xzzy
  
  Wrong! Light pollution is horrible.
  
  There’s people who are born and live in cities who have never seen the milky way, which is a terrible way to live.
  
  I understand that light at night makes the city safer, but it comes with a pretty big cost (both quality of life and financial, as running all those lamps isn’t cheap). I have to drive for hours to get far enough away from Chicago that city glow doesn’t interfere with photographs.
  - mccrum
    
    North Korea isn’t Dark Skies friendly because they’re concerned about Dark Skies, they do it because they have no power….
    
    They probably don’t do as much astrophotography as a nation that you do in your spare time either, so it’s totally wasted on them.
- chenille
  
  Yes, and better this than the pristine dark that represents the middle of the ocean, since you would drown there. Unless you have a boat, of course. If you do, the stars are beautiful.
  
  What were we supposed to learn from these comparisons, again?
  - Boundegar
    
    Boats are morally superior to natural gas.
    - SoItBegins
      
      How does it rate if your boat runs on natural gas?
big ryan

being able to see a perfectly crystal clear sky isn’t all about light pollution, it has alot to do with the weather of the area you are in, if its humid and close to sea level your not going to see as much as if you are on the top of a mountain with low humidity

when we had the giant black out awhile back here in san diego you still couldn’t see that many stars, and there was no light pollution
http://twitter.com/TriggerTX TonyF

Texas has the same thing in the Eagle Ford Play.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2012/12/27/the-eagle-ford-shale-boom-from-space/
http://twitter.com/writebastard Ian Wood

Don’t burn that! We need it.
flickerKuu

Oh look! We can see people’s faucets on fire from space! Cool! Drill baby drill! Let’s light up the whole country with CLEAN FREE NATURAL GAS (that totally corrupts our water supply and makes earthquakes). Go! ‘merica.
http://www.facebook.com/stewart.berntson Stewart Berntson

That’s the Bakken formation, and it is HUGE — they are producing more oil and natural gas from that formation in a day than they can actually ship out of it.
http://twitter.com/BonzoDog1 BonzoDog1

The Bakken will be back to black soon given the declining production figures — that’s another reason as gas pipeline will never be built.
- purple-stater
  
  Declining production? Since when? November had a (rare) 2% decline, and that was because of a winter storm. North Dakota is producing a lot more oil than Alaska at this point, and will probably pass Texas in 2-3 years.
http://www.facebook.com/venkat.rastogi Venkat Rastogi

Um, that looks like it’s in Canada somewhere, not ND. Maybe Calgary?
- IronEdithKidd
  
  The splotch is bigger than Chicagoland. Calgary and Winnipeg put together aren’t half as big.
Boris Bartlog

No, not Canada. Track the lights as follows:
- on the western tip of Lake Superior, there is a point of light. That’s Duluth.
- directly west of that point of light, almost halfway to the big splotch of light, is another point. That’s Fargo.
- still going directly west, a similar distance again, you get another point of light. That’s Bismarck.
- slightly west of that and somewhat north is another point of light that is Minot.
Those last two are the two last cities you can distinguish before the big smudge of light that is the gas field (though I believe you can also pick out Dickinson as a bright spot on the south end).
It may well extend into southern Canada and/or eastern Montana, but it looks to be mostly in ND, just as stated.
Dan Allard

Reminds me of this map, which seems to show that there aren’t many people there, at least relative to the amount of light: http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html
Dave Jenkins

Huh. Why was my comment removed? I didn’t cuss, and I thought I wrote a legitimate response.
http://www.facebook.com/joe.blurton.1 Joe Blurton

You can almost read a newspaper at night in the Bakken fields. New plans are to generate electricity from the now spent gas to power rigs and equipment.
cservant

The funny thing is, there’s a gut in the natural gas market. Prices are so low.
purple-stater

Calgary is visible, slightly NW of the circled area.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-Miller/100000952005408 Bruce Miller

American prosperity! So good to see! This just might help pay for development some of the Solar, Wind, Wave, Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, Biological renewable = perpetual = eternal, clean American energy sources – before it too runs out, just like Texas Oil did. Facts seem to indicate that these wells are relatively short lived, and as demands skyrocket, will likely be pumped dry in decades. Pray we invest wisely in some of the eternals for the future of our country!
boomsb

That’s right, no food or fuel, and we’re burning fields and fields of natural gas 24-hours a day, just because the developers can’t be bothered to trap it.
flickerKuu

You guys know that burning off fuel is pretty much normal operating procedure in ANY gas refiner plant, right?
http://profiles.google.com/westcarleton Ray Perkins

Read somewhere that the amount they’re burning would heat 500,000 homes. That’s a huge waste just because big oil can’t be bothered. I think someday we may regret doing that. Ain’t gonna last forever.
flickerKuu

Ahh thanks for the explanation Guy. Now everythign makes sense.
boomsb

I’m aware, but that doesn’t mean I have to like or approve of it.
flickerKuu

Cool Boomsb, so then I guess what you are saying is you approve of them exploding because of building pressure. Great, maybe you should re-think that approval or like. FYI – I am against fracking, I’m just saying that the flames everyone thinks is waste is actually required or we get NO gas at all.
Guysmiley

The problem with the Bakken reserve is they aren’t collecting any of the natural gas because there isn’t a pipeline. And they’re not building a pipeline because, hey, fuck it there’s oil to be pumped out now. That’s what is so galling about the flaring in western ND.