The expansion of a project in the Bakken reserve area of North Dakota will cut down on costs in part due to the use of flared natural gas, project leaders said. The U.S. subsidiary of Norwegian energy company Statoil, along with a joint venture between General Electric and Ferus Natural Gas Fuels, announced plans to expand the so-called Last Mile project in order to capture flared natural gas and use it to power Statoil’s drilling operations in North Dakota. “By using this captured natural gas in place of diesel in our drilling and hydraulic fracturing operations, we are further reducing emissions and costs,” Lance Langford, Statoil’s vice president for Bakken development and production, said in a statement Wednesday. Natural gas associated with the vast shale oil deposits in the states is burned off, or flared, because of a lack of processing capabilities. North […]