What is Gas Flaring? (And Why Does It Matter?)

The extraction of oil releases natural gas as a by-product. This gas can cause dangerous explosions that damage critical infrastructure and harm workers and the environment. Operators have traditionally flared (burned off) the gas to depressurize their equipment and reduce this risk.

However, there is increasing concern both within and outside the industry that flaring is a waste of a critical energy resource and an unnecessary contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.

The World Bank has called for an end to the practice and many oil operators have signed on to the bank’s “Zero Flaring by 2030” initiative. The initiative calls on governments and operators to eliminate the practice of flaring for all new oil developments and eliminate the practice in legacy assets by 2030.  

A Waste of Resources

Natural gas is a valuable commodity that can be used to generate power. According to the World Bank, operators flare approximately 144 billion cubic meters of gas every year, which is enough to power the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

The challenge is that for natural gas to be properly captured and transported to sites where consumers could make use of it, new pipelines for transportation and storage would need to be built. In remote locations or where the volumes of gas released are low, it is not practical or economic to build the infrastructure required to make use of the gas.

Source of Harmful Greenhouse Gas Emissions

When natural gas – which is largely composed of methane – is flared, it releases C02. This is better than releasing the methane directly into the atmosphere as methane is considered a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (on a magnitude of approximately 80 times more potent than C02 on a twenty-year time horizon, according to the IPCC).

However, the IEA estimates that average flare combustion efficiency (the percentage of gas which is successfully burned off) hovers around 92%. Under optimal conditions and maintenance, flare combustion efficiency should be around 98%.

This gap means that substantial volumes of potent greenhouse gases such as methane, black soot and nitrogen oxides are unnecessarily released into the atmosphere.  

Oil producers must find other uses for the gas (such as using it for energy production as discussed in the last section) or other ways to capture and store it, such as by injecting it back into the reservoir. However, despite technological advances, injecting the gas back into earth is not always possible, practical or economic.

What are oil and gas operators doing about gas flaring?

The World Bank’s Zero Flaring Initiative calls on operators to eliminate non-emergency flaring as soon as possible. More than fifty oil companies, thirty-four governments and fifteen development institutions have signed onto the initiative.

ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Saudi Aramco, and ConocoPhillips are among the fifty-three oil companies backing the World Bank’s work.

TotalEnergies, for instance, announced a partnership with the Basrah Gas Company last year. The partnership would see TotalEnergies invest in the infrastructure required to capture gas that is currently being flared on three oil field and supply it for power generation.

While there has been progress made – the IEA says that the amount of associated gas flared during oil production has decreased by 13% since 1996 despite a 20% increase in oil production over the same period – the industry is currently not on track to eliminate the practice fast enough.

If the world wants to meet net zero by 2050 targets, oil field operators must eliminate all non-emergency flaring by 2030.

Interested in learning more about this topic? 

If you’re tasked with reducing methane emissions in your operations, join us at the National Summit on Methane Mitigation, taking place at the Norris Conference Centre, Houston on December 6-8, 2022. Join over 200 of your industry peers at North America's largest summit on
measuring, monitoring and mitigating methane emissions. Download the agenda for more information.