The phrase
"gas flares" refers to the flames or fires that are ignited and burn off excess gas as part of the process of drilling and extracting oil or natural gas from the ground.
Full definition
A few years ago, while poring over satellite images of the Earth at night, scientists spotted the bright glow of
natural gas flares burning in the oil and gas fields that have fueled America's recent energy boom.
On the upstream side, emissions concerns could slow supply or drive up costs through increased regulation — especially if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cries foul on the enormous amounts
of gas flared from the production fields.
In fact, in 2012, natural
gas flaring in North Dakota emitted 4.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of the emissions of 1 million cars!
CO2 emissions includes fossil fuel emissions, cement production and emissions
from gas flaring.
Effect of
Gas Flaring on Soil and Cassava Productivity in Ebedei, Ukwuani Local Government Area, Delta State, Nigeria
Conducted over a 12 - year period spanning 1995 - 2006, the survey, commissioned by the World Bank's Global
Gas Flaring Reduction partnership (GGFR), was carried out by a team of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Gas is released in an area of at least 7500 km2, with
gas flares extending up to 25 meters in the water column.
In a bid to
reduce gas flaring and pay off outstanding reparations for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq has hired Japanese firm Toyo Engineering to help it build a Continue Reading
Total emissions through 2012,
including gas flaring and cement manufacture, are 384 GtC; fossil fuel emissions alone are ∼ 370 GtC.
Between 2005 and 2015, we halved the volume of
gas flared at our operated facilities3, excluding the initial start - up phase, from 15 million cubic meters per day to 7.2 million.
Emissions from certain industrial processes,
like gas flaring and certain aspects of aluminum and concrete production, remain exempted from the carbon tax.
Take the controversy
over gas flaring in Nigeria, where oil firms burn off 40 percent of the natural gas found with oil.
Where these measures didn't pan out, the City of Sydney purchased carbon offsets, via a
landfill gas flaring project in New South Wales.
Among the rules that BLM plans to delay until January 2019 are requirements that oil and gas producers submit plans to cut waste, measure and
report gas flared from wells and dispose of gas that reaches the surface during drilling and well completion.
Kachikwu said the Federal Government was working to bring development to the Niger Delta region through the Modular Refineries Initiative,
Gas Flare Commercialisation programme and collaboration with oil - producing states, on the Amnesty programme.
The president who noted the need to deploy research and development initiatives towards technology innovations in exploration and development processing, logistics and marketing for the benefit of member countries also called for collective effort to
halt gas flaring.
But the images suggest that scientists will want to take advantage of the DNB's images in multiple ways: not just to study clouds, but also to assess disasters such as power outages (such as before and after Superstorm Sandy last month), to
study gas flares and estimate volumes of CO2 emissions, or to keep an eye on illegal unreported fishing (the boats emit light to draw in their stocks).
The Geospatial Technologies Project, established ten years ago, had previously assessed satellite images of damaged Syrian World Heritage sites, the destruction of communities in Zimbabwe,
industrial gas flaring in Nigeria, and an array of other human rights and environmental threats.
The tiny prefab shack 2014 cluttered with mounted fish, piles of antlers and a wolf pelt Keller bought in Alaska 2014 is wedged between a levee that holds back Missouri River floodwaters and a new oil well, topped by a
blazing gas flare.
Visible even from space, more than 1,500 natural
gas flares illuminate the prairie in the Bakken oil field in North Dakota, for lack of gas pipelines.
Mike Gailliot, the owner of the pile, opens a chain - link fence and leads the group into a maze of pipes and blowers, all pumping methane — a potent greenhouse gas — into a six -
inch gas flare that is invisible save for the willowy shadow it casts on the sidewalk.
She noticed conditions worsened when there were high volumes of natural
gas flares associated with oil and gas processing.
Two technologies are applied: intensified aeration of the landfill to decrease methane formation, and combustion of methane in special
lean gas flares.
Ocean floor observatories, research ship and airplane were deployed to a area of 250 active
methane gas flares in the Arctic Ocean.
[Information from Ceres» report, Flaring Up: North Dakota Natural
Gas Flaring More Than Doubles in Two Years]
Harlan Shober remembers how cars lined Hickory Ridge Road in the spring of 2008 with curiosity - seekers hoping for a glimpse of the first Marcellus
shale gas flare in Chartiers Township, Pennsylvania.
According to Amnesty International, multinational oil companies such as Shell, Total, and Chevron, as well as the Nigerian government are jointly responsible
for gas flaring, but no one is held accountable.
GGFR will continue to monitor
worldwide gas flaring over the next few decades to encourage countries and companies alike to reduce the amount of waste and emissions generated.
Most recently, documents made public by Platform, a British environmental and human rights organization working in Uganda, appeared to reveal an agreement between the British oil exploration company Tullow Oil and the Ugandan government to
allow gas flaring.
[36] The plaintiffs in this case argued that
gas flaring produced air pollution and constant heat, light and noise.
Since its launch in 2002, the MODIS on NASA's Aqua satellite has detected thermal anomalies such as wildfires, agricultural fires, and
gas flares on a daily basis.
According to the World Bank's
Global Gas Flaring Reduction Program «150 billion cubic meters (or 5.3 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas are being flared and vented annually.»
Total emissions through 2012,
including gas flaring and cement manufacture, are 384 GtC; fossil fuel emissions alone are ∼ 370 GtC.
Global fossil - fuel emissions, like the CO2 emitted from the natural -
gas flare at this North Dakota oil well, could show a decline this year, says a Stanford - led Global Carbon Project report.
Landfill methane emission rates are estimated using the first - order decay method recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in order to estimate both total emissions reductions for landfill gas - to - electricity generation and an increase in
landfill gas flaring.
Hence, it is also the second country worldwide with the highest CO2 emissions resulting
from gas flare, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The first recently unveiled global satellite survey
of gas flaring — a process commonly used to dispose of natural gas freed during oil production — has shown what many have now suspected for years: it is an extremely wasteful, costly problem that has helped contribute to global warming.
The move cut the amount of
gas flared in Total's exploration and production operations by 10 percent2.
A gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Gulf.
A gas flare burns an oil worker monitors a water tank while loading saltwater from an oil well storage tank near Sidney, Montana.
Mr. Mikanti Baru, the Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has promised that
gas flaring will end in Nigeria in a year...
According to him, although the technology to optimally utilize natural gas in the country is expensive for Nigeria to maintain, the country welcomes international partnerships and initiatives for lower carbon in the oil and gas sector that focuses on reducing natural
gas flaring and capturing the product for commercial use.