Gas prices here in Edmonton are about $1.05 right now, and they were $1.18 in Vancouver on the weekend. Most people generally expect the prices to keep going up, perhaps quite dramatically in the near future. What would you do if you were an extremely profitable oil company faced with that reality?
If you guessed “burn excess gas and pollute the environment”, you’d be right!
That bright orange spot is from the flames atop one of the “flares” as they are called (I think) at a refinery near Edmonton. I believe most refineries will tell you that burning off excess gas is a common practice, though the flames I saw tonight were unusually large. They were burning at 6:30 PM when I drove by heading north, and they were still going at around 9:45 PM when I took these.
These photos are from the Petro-Canada refinery on the southeast side of the city. According to the company’s website, the site processes 135,000 barrels of crude oil per day (switching this year to 135,000 barrels of oil sands feedstock per day).
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