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Earth Science

Gas Flaring Declined in 2020, Study Finds (nytimes.com) 32

Gas flaring worldwide decreased by 5 percent in the pandemic year, mostly because of lower demand for oil, according to a recent report from the World Bank. From a report: While the overall drop was expected, the report offered a detailed picture of the flaring activities around the world, with steep declines in some areas, like the United States, and surprising increases in others, notably China. Flaring occurs when the gas that emerges with crude oil is burned off rather than captured. That burning emits carbon dioxide, a gas that is the main contributor to climate change. According to World Bank officials, flaring adds roughly 400 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions to the atmosphere every year. According to the report, Russia was responsible for more flaring overall than any other country in 2020, contributing 15 percent of the global total. But within Russia, there were areas of progress. Burning continued to decrease in the Khanty-Mansi region of Siberia, where flaring volumes have dropped by nearly 80 percent over the previous 15 years.
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Gas Flaring Declined in 2020, Study Finds

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  • They're anticipating buying up all the renewables. We're going to keep see the price of gas rise, and pathetic cover stories to justify it, despite the decrease in demand.

    • Believe it or not, a lot of petroleum companies have seen the writing on the wall. There is a push to not only reduce flaring every year, but some fracking fleets are converting to use flare gas to power their equipment while on location.

      That's not to say that these companies are eager to part ways with the production and use of petroleum products... but the reality is, we are still going to need oil and gas for a pretty good while until the alternatives mature. There's an argument to be made that even a su

      • We're going to keep see the price of gas rise, and pathetic cover stories to justify it, despite the decrease in demand.

      • Believe it or not, a lot of petroleum companies have seen the writing on the wall.

        Privately they saw the writing on the wall years ago, but publicly they're doing everything they can to convince people that not only is there no writing, there's no wall either. "Strategy is avoiding revealing that you're out of ammunition by continuing to fire".

  • by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Monday May 10, 2021 @04:58PM (#61370430)

    I always thought it odd to just "throw away" all that wonderful natural gas fuel. But then I thought about it more- it probably is too expensive to try and capture, purify, and transport it. So I assumed it is mostly an economic issue; turned out I was mostly right...

    The reality is there isn't enough infrastructure to store the gas, and burning it off is much better than just releasing it to the atmosphere (since it is mostly methane, which is a really bad greenhouse gas). And, it often does cost more to try and save it.

    This is an interesting and informative article:
    https://fossilfuel.com/gas-fla... [fossilfuel.com]

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Natural gas *can* be converted to synthetic liquid fuels. Presumably it's not done in these situations because it's not economical for dealing with intermittent flows of gas and flaring the gas is free. But if you had to pay for the environmental effect of flaring the gas, the economics might look different.

      I've read that some cryptocurrency operations are interested in opportunistically using gas that would be otherwise flared as an energy source.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      No, flaring off is the old way of getting rid of natural gas. Nowadays it's actually worthwhile to capture the gas and sell it. It's why in North America. natural gas prices plummeted despite rising sharply everywhere else in the world.

      In North America, fracking is common, which releases a lot of natural gas, which is captured and sold off. In other places, natural gas reserves dwindled resulting in the price discrepancy to the point it's worthwhile to capture the natural gas and export it to other countrie

  • The article says that there are reductions in flaring, but it doesn't say why for all cases. It says the US is flaring less because oil wells are being upgraded to better capture the natural gas. And Nigeria is flaring less just because they're not pumping as much oil. It doesn't specify if other countries are pumping less, or capturing more or if they're just letting the gas leak into the atmosphere.
    You only have 3 real choices with the gas from an oil well:
    Let it leak out into the air, which from a p
    • There's a 4th option: don't produce the oil in the first place, keeping all of the fossil fuels both oil and gas, in the ground.

  • I've been flaring just like normal. Hey! Quit trying to light my ass on fire all the time that's not funny!

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