The Dangers of Gas Flaring: Why We Need to Stop This Environmental Hazard

Posted on Jan 03, 2023 at 09:01 PM

These days, calls abound to reduce gas flaring and stop these practices. The motivation behind the urge to reduce them is due to the enormous damage they cause to the environment, economy, and health.

In our article for today, let us tell you about the most critical points of gas flaring, why it is done, its most important effects, and why the use of such activities should be limited or eliminated. 

Please, read on… 

What is gas flaring?

Gas flaring is the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction in the flare. This happens when investing oil from a natural reservoir (wells) and treating it in special units as a safety factor to eliminate excess gas for oil extraction operations from its fields. The practice has persisted from the beginning of oil production over 160 years ago.

Gas flaring wastes a valuable natural resource that should be used for productive purposes, such as generating power or production processes. But the most Gas flaring countries are Russia and Nigeria.

Some studies reported the amount of gas that is currently flared each year globally – about 150 billion cubic meters – could power the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. But not only that, the process of gas flaring produces the same carbon emissions as 200 million cars over a year.

Why is gas flared?

To this day, many solutions that have sought to reduce gas flaring have failed, but this does not mean stopping flaring it. Gas flaring is safe, even if its results are wasteful and polluting. There are many other reasons; here are three of them:

• Safety Reasons

One of the most important reasons for gas flaring. Extracting and processing oil and gas involves high and changeable pressures.

During crude oil extraction, a sudden increase in pressure could cause an explosion. Oil accidents, though rare, can result in destructive and dangerous fires that are difficult to contain and control.

Gas flaring allows operators to reduce & manage unpredictable and significant pressure variations and de-pressurize their equipment by flaring any excess gas.

• Technical and Economic Reasons

In many cases, oil fields are located in remote and inaccessible places. These sites are hard to access and may need to produce consistent or large volumes of associated gas. Therefore, from an economic and logistical point of view, gas flaring is better than transporting, treating, and using them.

Additionally, capturing and using the associated gas is often considered prohibitively expensive if oil production sites are small and dispersed over a large geographic area. In these instances, it is better to get rid of them.

Sometimes, where it's impossible to utilise the gas, the local geology will allow it to be conserved by re-injection back into the reservoir. However, this, too, is only sometimes feasible despite the technological advances and the application of modern techniques over the past years.

• Regulatory Reasons

In some cases, operating companies prohibit the use or sale of associated gas. For example, when the company owns the right to extract oil without having any authority to benefit from the gas produced with the extraction process, then the company resorts to gas flaring.

In other instances, regulations may need to specify how the associated gas will be handled commercially. This creates legal ambiguity on how associated gas should be processed.

Additionally, regulations of organisations and countries that impose penalties on companies that flare gas may only sometimes be effective at curtailing the practice, especially if it is less expensive and more economically viable to pay the fines than to capture and sell the gas.

What are the main effects of gas flaring?

There are many effects of gas flaring, and they raise tremendous international concern about reducing them. It is noticeable that they are abundant in developing countries, such as Libya and Nigeria. However, its harm to humans, the economy, and the environment generally affects the world, making it a source of great fear.

• Environmental Degradation

As a result of gas flaring and Venting, carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases are released. This matter affects global warming and climate change because it increases the harmful environmental damage affecting the quality and health of the environment surrounding the gas flaring area in particular and the ecological system as a whole in general.

Methane and CO2 are the most significant greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. But methane is more harmful and prevalent in flares that burn less efficiently. When considering its effect over 100 years, the warming potential of one kilogram of methane is 21 times that of one kilogram of Co2.

As mentioned above, gas flaring causes more local effects on nearby areas. For example, the potential for acid rain increases, and the negative impact on agriculture, forests, and other infrastructures, such as water and soil pollution, and surface erosion, increase.

• Health Impacts on Humans

We often hear about residents living near production facilities or factories suffering from respiratory problems due to gas flaring, such as asthma or bronchitis.

Moreover, studies have reported the presence of more than 250 toxic substances resulting from gas flaring. These include benzopyrene, benzene, Carbon disulfide (CS2), carbonyl sulfide (COS), and toluene, in addition to some metals such as mercury, chromium, arsenic, and some acid gases such as sulfur. All these substances contribute to an increased risk of various types of cancer, especially thyroid cancer.

A report showed that Gas flaring causes 49 premature deaths annually, about 4,960 respiratory diseases among children, and 120 asthma attacks. Therefore, we must strive to eliminate this phenomenon and protect the people exposed. This can be done by studying part of effective risk management in the oil and gas industry.

• Economic Impacts 

The economic aspect is also essential, given the importance and specificity of the previous antiquities. Gas flaring can significantly affect the state's economy by earning huge revenues and money from selling these gases if they are preserved instead of flaring losses, in addition to the significant investment opportunities in the private sector if this gas flaring is exploited.

For example, Oil companies in Nigeria flare about 2.5 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas per day. Which means billions of annual losses of over $2.5 billion.

How can we reduce the amount of gas being flared?

While gas flaring is unavoidable in certain circumstances and cases, several solutions allow oil and gas companies to monetise this gas, resulting in a mutually beneficial outcome for their profits and the environment.

Traditionally associated gas is collected and transported via gas pipelines, depending on the scale of gas transported. This happens if the ordered quantity is plentiful. Otherwise, it is flared, and some vitality can be added.

It should be noted that there are some alternative ways to reduce the amount of flaring, such as Oil operators can re-inject associated gas back into the ground or build the infrastructure needed to capture, store, and transport the associated gas when the amount becomes large.

At the same time, governments and the international community must combine to implement effective policies and regulations that reduce the amount of gas flaring and even stop this phenomenon if possible. And not only that, governments have to make the decision and bear the responsibility for that mainly.

The World Bank’s initiative to eliminate gas flaring by 2030 has had buy-in from many industry leaders and major oil-producing countries, which have affirmed their commitment to applying the basic principles of the initiative.

Finally,

Many Arab and international countries still follow the methods of gas flaring. Some countries use measures that negatively impact that process, while others ignore it entirely. However, more information needs to be understood in depth about gas flaring and how more preventive and less harmful methods can replace some gas flaring processes. 

Here, we can only advise you to attend the oil and gas training courses in Istanbul.