Fracking lights up the North Dakota sky It has brought great prosperity to the area too - it has risen from being one of the poorest states in the US to now having a GDP that is 29% above the national average. Children who were born to parents in the lower fifth of the income bracket are now 35% more likely to enter the top fifth income bracket themselves. It has also brought at least 25,000 jobs to the area. Entire towns have sprung up to house the workers. These so-called "man camps," due to the high numbers of transient male workers they house, have contributed to the night time glare in North Dakota. However, it is flaring of natural gas from the wells that has meant the fracking boom in North Dakota has become visible from space. Natural gas is burned off from the top of the wells as a waste product in the fracking process as it is released from reserves under ground. The volume of flaring in North Dakota is reported to have increased by 50 per cent in the past two years. The bulk of the emissions come ion the first few days after a new well has been fracked as methane and other related gases are released from the shale underneath, but it does continue through the life of the well. This gas could be put to use in heating homes or generating electricity. Enough gas is burned off to power all the homes in Washing and Chicago, according to the Financial Times. However, a lack of pipeline infrastructure to carry the gas away means it is simply burned off into the atmosphere instead. The industry argues that it is cheaper to flare off gas than it is to build the expensive pipelines. It is estimated more than $1 billion of gas was burned off in 2012 alone. Flaring, however, also releases carbon dioxide - a greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere while any unburned methane gas can also contribute to climate change. US environmental regulators have given drillers until January 2015 to install equipment that will reduce the amount of flaring and the release of gases it produces. It is unlikely anything on this scale will happen in the UK - the reserves are too small and the gas is likely to be considered too valuable to waste.