Flaring is the controlled burning of natural gas that comes up alongside crude oil during extraction. Rather than capturing this “associated gas,” operators ignite it at the top of a flare stack, producing the tall flames visible at refineries and oil production sites worldwide. In 2023, global flaring reached 148 billion cubic meters of gas, a 7% increase from the year before and the highest level since 2019.
Why Oil and Gas Operations Flare Gas
Natural gas doesn’t always come out of the ground on its own. It often surfaces as a byproduct of oil drilling, dissolved in or sitting above the crude. This associated gas has to go somewhere, and flaring is the industry’s default release valve when there’s no infrastructure to capture it.
The reasons fall into two broad categories: safety and economics. On the safety side, oil and gas extraction involves extreme, rapidly changing pressures. If pressure spikes unexpectedly inside equipment, it can cause an explosion. Pressure relief valves automatically open to divert excess gas to the flare stack, where burning it off is far safer than letting raw hydrocarbons vent into the air. Some associated gas also contains toxic compounds, and burning destroys most of them before they reach the atmosphere.
The economic reasons are more straightforward. Oil fields are often remote, and the associated gas they produce may be too small or inconsistent to justify building pipelines or processing plants. When production sites are small and scattered across a wide area, the cost of capturing and selling that gas can exceed its market value. In those cases, operators treat the gas as waste and flare it. This type of burning, done as a matter of routine rather than in response to an emergency, is called routine flaring. It’s the kind most environmental efforts aim to eliminate.
What Flaring Releases Into the Air
Flaring is often described as a cleaner alternative to venting raw methane, and in principle that’s true. Burning natural gas converts methane (a potent greenhouse gas) into carbon dioxide (a less potent one). The problem is that real-world flares don’t burn as cleanly as the industry long assumed.
Regulators and operators have traditionally worked under the assumption that flares stay lit and destroy 98% of methane. Research from the University of Michigan found the reality is worse on both counts. Flares were unlit roughly 3% to 5% of the time, meaning raw methane was escaping directly into the atmosphere with no combustion at all. Even when lit, many flares operated at low efficiency. Combining both factors, the average effective flaring efficiency was only about 91%, meaning nearly one in ten units of methane passes through unburned.
Beyond methane and carbon dioxide, flaring produces black carbon (soot), sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds like benzene. Each of these carries its own set of consequences.
Climate Effects, Especially in the Arctic
Carbon dioxide from flaring contributes to global warming in the same way as any fossil fuel combustion. But the black carbon produced by incomplete burning has an outsized effect in cold regions. Globally, flaring accounts for only about 3% of black carbon emissions. In the Arctic, however, one modeling study estimated that flaring is responsible for 42% of airborne black carbon on an annual average. During March, more than half of the black carbon near the surface may come from flares.
Black carbon particles absorb sunlight and warm the air around them. When they settle on snow and ice, they darken the surface, causing it to absorb more heat and melt faster. Near Russian oil and gas fields, which are among the world’s largest, this effect is significant enough to trigger sea ice melting. That melting exposes darker ocean water, which absorbs even more heat, creating a feedback loop that amplifies warming beyond what the initial emissions alone would cause.
Health Risks for Nearby Communities
People living or working near flaring sites face direct exposure to the pollutants that incomplete combustion releases. Benzene is among the most concerning. It’s a known carcinogen, and even short-term exposure at elevated levels can affect blood cell production and liver function.
A study of a prolonged flaring incident at a BP refinery in Texas City examined 733 benzene-exposed residents and compared them to 58 unexposed individuals. The exposed group had significantly elevated white blood cell counts, higher platelet counts, and increased levels of liver enzymes, all markers of stress on the blood and liver. These changes indicate a heightened risk of developing blood-related disorders or liver damage. The findings held even after accounting for participants’ smoking history, suggesting the flaring exposure itself was driving the effect.
Which Countries Flare the Most
Nine countries dominate global flaring: Russia, Iran, Iraq, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria, Libya, and Mexico. Together they account for roughly three quarters of all gas flared worldwide, despite producing less than half of global oil. The imbalance highlights that flaring isn’t purely a function of how much oil a country produces. It reflects infrastructure investment, regulation, and whether governments prioritize capturing associated gas.
Russia leads the list by a wide margin, driven by the sheer scale of its oil operations in Siberia, where remote locations and limited pipeline networks make gas capture expensive. Iraq flares heavily because decades of conflict and underinvestment left its southern oil fields without adequate gas processing facilities. The United States, despite having more infrastructure than most, still flares significant volumes in regions like the Permian Basin in West Texas, where rapid drilling has outpaced pipeline construction.
Alternatives to Routine Flaring
The gas being flared has real energy value. Capturing it instead of burning it is technically feasible in most situations, though the economics vary. The main alternatives include piping the gas to processing plants for sale, using it on-site to generate electricity, reinjecting it underground to maintain reservoir pressure and boost oil recovery, or converting it into other products.
Small-scale and modular technologies have made capture more practical for remote or smaller fields. Modular gas processing plants can be assembled on-site without the massive construction projects that traditional facilities require. Small-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) units can cool the gas into liquid form for transport by truck when pipelines aren’t available. On-site power generation lets operators use the gas to run their own equipment, cutting both flaring and fuel costs.
The barrier is rarely technological. It’s financial. Building capture infrastructure requires upfront investment, and for smaller or shorter-lived wells, operators may calculate that the gas revenue won’t cover the cost. Regulation plays a decisive role in shifting that calculus. When governments mandate capture or impose penalties for routine flaring, the economics change.
Efforts to End Routine Flaring
The most prominent global effort is the Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative, launched by the World Bank in 2015. Governments and oil companies that join commit to ending routine flaring no later than 2030. The initiative focuses on cooperation between regulators, operators, and financial institutions to remove the barriers to gas capture through better regulation, technology deployment, and financing arrangements.
The distinction between routine and non-routine flaring matters here. Safety flaring during emergencies or equipment malfunctions isn’t going away, and nobody is proposing it should. The target is the everyday, ongoing burning of gas that could otherwise be captured. Despite growing participation in the initiative, global flaring volumes rose in 2023, suggesting that voluntary commitments alone haven’t been enough to reverse the trend, particularly in countries where enforcement is weak or oil production is expanding rapidly.