Fracking hot: N. Dakota man ‘sets tap water on fire’
A video made by a man from North Dakota shows him cautiously holding a lighter up against the stream of water coming out of his tap, prompting large flames to rise up into the faucet. North Dakota has been home to a fracking boom over the past few years.
“Really weird, right?” he questioned as he switched the camera off. The video has had over 400,000 views. It was only uploaded within the last three weeks, garnering attention on a global scale. The video prompted one commenter to note sarcastically that there was “nothing like a refreshing glass of fire.”
The scene in particular has been thrown into question by investigative journalist, Phelim McAleer, who postulated that residents in the man’s neighborhood had been able to light tap water on fire since around the 1930s because of naturally occurring methane. The filmmaker later said that his findings were irrelevant.
And experts say the flammable water could be caused by a high concentration of methane in the line, which occasionally occurs naturally.
North Dakota is the second largest oil-producing state in the US, reaping more than 911,000 barrels of shale gas on a daily basis.
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