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A NEWLY released report has revealed that 150b m³ of gas is flared off every year, equivalent to 5% of global production.

The study was put together by General Electric (GE), and effectively illustrates the scale of the problem. It claims that the production industry uselessly burns enough natural gas to supply 30% of EU demand, wasting the energy equivalent of 2.4m bbl of oil every day.

Not only does this represent roughly $10b in lost revenue per year, it emits 400m t of carbon dioxide for no benefit. In perspective, this has the same annual impact as running 77m cars, more than a third of all those currently used in the US. The environmental problems caused by gas flaring can be much worse locally. Areas around a large site run the risk of suffering clouds of soot, showers of acid rain, and rogue methane and sulphur dioxide emissions.

“The technology to address the problem exists today and the policy reforms required are largely understood,” claims the report. “However, deeper issues regarding infrastructure development and market design hinder progress in the places where gas flaring is most rampant.”

Considering the vast amount of revenue lost from the process, it seems surprising that the usual reason for flaring perfectly viable gas is an economic one. The necessary equipment and piping needed to run a fully efficient operation requires a substantial amount of capital and, thanks to the nature of the deposits, low regional pricing or the simple lack of a market, this may not work out be a sound investment. In addition to this, some ‘sour’ gas deposits require processing before they can be sold, making harvesting an even less attractive option.

Environmental regulations in individual countries have been helping to reduce the scale of flaring over the years, but the report proposes ways that industry itself can eliminate the waste. These range from using carbon financing to help supply the capital needed to set up gas collection, to compressing and re-injecting quantities of unusable sour gas.

Michael Farina, programme manager at GE and author of the paper, said: “Power generation, gas reinjection and distributed energy solutions are available today and can eliminate the wasteful practice of burning unused gas. This fuel can be used to generate affordable electricity for the world’s homes and factories.”

“With greater global attention and concerted effort—including partnerships, sound policy and innovative technologies—large-scale gas flaring could be largely eliminated in as little as five years. It’s a win-win outcome.”

A copy of the full report can be found here.