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If it seems like you're seeing more flares, it's because you are
By dwray in The nature of things
August 21, 2012

Since the Eagle Ford Shale play started booming, I'll bet you've noticed the flares. It's an unsettling moment, glancing out the car window and seeing pillars of fire dotting the rolling plains. Oil companies put in the flares to burn off natural gas until they can get hooked up to pipelines to get the stuff moving into the market.

Problem is,as the Texas Tribune reports, with the Eagle Ford booming (it produced about 30 million barrels of oil last year) while the Permian Basin has roared back to life (they've produced 260 million barrels a year for the past three years), pipeline companies are scrambling to keep up.

Between the legal issues the companies have to contend with and getting the actual pipelines and processing equipment installed, the oil comes up from the ground and gets stored but the natural gas is hard to transport in trucks, and oil companies would rather burn the stuff off than decrease their production rates.

So, if you thought you were seeing more flares on your treks through Eagle Ford hotspots, it turns out, you were right.