Gas flaring


Nature

Gas flaring is the burning of the natural gas associated with oil extraction. The practice has persisted from the beginning of oil production in the 19th Century. Flaring persists to this day because it is a relatively safe, though wasteful and polluting, method of disposing of the associated gas that comes from oil production. It takes place due to a range of issues, from market and economic constraints, to a lack of appropriate regulation and political will.

Incidence

The amount of gas currently flared each year – about 139 billion cubic meters – could power the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

Oil producers can either re-inject associated gas or use it for productive purposes. However, operators often  face significant challenges capturing, treating, storing, transporting, and commercializing associated gas, and the cost of ending all routine flaring could be more than US$100 billion.

Thousands of gas flares at oil production sites worldwide burned approximately 139 billion cubic meters of gas in 2022. Assuming a ‘typical’ associated gas composition, a flare combustion efficiency of 98% and a Global Warming Potential for methane of 25, each cubic meter of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2 equivalent emissions (CO2e), resulting in over 350 million tons of CO2e emissions annually. The methane emissions resulting from the inefficiency of the flare combustion contribute significantly to global warming. This is particularly so in the short to medium term as, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, methane is over 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a warming gas on a 20-year timeframe. On this basis, the annual CO2e emissions are increased by around 80 million tonnes.

Counter claim

  1. In many cases, oil fields are located in remote and inaccessible places. These sites are hard to access and may not produce consistent or large volumes of associated gas that operators can use. This can make it logistically and economically challenging to transport associated gas to where it can be processed and utilized.


© 2021-2024 AskTheFox.org by Vacilando.org
Official presentation at encyclopedia.uia.org