While I was on that ride, I found this at the bottom of a smoky pillar rising along the Hudson River:
Turns out Central Hudson Gas & Electric has a pipeline under the Hudson at that point and I’d admired their spherical storage tank from ground level some years back:
I don’t know what they’re flaring off, but it looks messier than, say, propane. There’s another flare nozzle just out of the picture on the lower left, both along the edge of the circular concrete pad left over from a cylindrical storage tank, so they do this often enough to have some permanent infrastructure.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Cutesy flare….
Not like the one we have ‘here’ from BASF. When I say, ‘here’, I mean ’20 km away as the crow flies, in another country, in the Antwerp harbour area’. Our little flare has kept people 20 km away awake at night with its roar. It lights up the sky enough to read a book over here.
Now *that* is a flare…. :-p
Looks like the Devil’s own cigarette lighter…
Did I see correct, a cigar in Red Adair’s team member’s mouth?
“Smoking on a cable tool rig was absolutely forbidden; you can tell where a cable tool rig worked from the Copenhagen snuff cans in the surrounding bushes”
(from chapter 5 “Drilling Methods”)
Kenneth S. Deffeyes:
Hubbert’s Peak:
The Impending World Oil Shortage
Well, considering the situation, they could be smoking highway flares without any risk: anything combustible within half a mile of the blowout was already ashes!
Also impressive from ground level – they were doing this on a Saturday morning in August last year. Saw it on my way out from a crew event down at the boathouse. https://picasaweb.google.com/115825348318679016592/CentralHudsonGasFlare
I’d like to have a can or two of that in the middle of the winter…