Crude oil and natural gas are found trapped in geologic formations known as reservoirs. These two resources often occur together within the same reservoir. When a well is drilled to extract oil, some of the associated natural gas naturally rises to the surface along with it.
For a combination of safety, technological, economic, and regulatory reasons, this natural gas is often burned off at or near the wellhead—a process known as natural gas flaring. This practice results in an enormous waste of energy. In fact, the amount of gas flared globally each year contains enough energy to power the entire economy of sub-Saharan Africa.1
Anthropogenic methane is a potent greenhouse gas, contributing to approximately 30% of the global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution. Gas flaring is an important component of total methane emissions.
Gas flares are identified by their heat signature, which can be detected using satellites equipped with specialized sensors. These satellites capture the infrared emissions produced by gas flaring at upstream oil and gas facilities.2
A heat map of approximately 145,000 gas flares detected by satellites from 2012 to 2023 highlights the widespread nature of this practice, with several major hot spots, including West Siberia in Russia; the Middle East; Alberta, Canada; and West Texas, North Dakota, and other major oil producing regions in the United States.
Research, policy initiatives, and public awareness around gas flaring have increased in recent years, yet the overall impact remains mixed. At a global level, the volume of natural gas flared in 2023 was roughly the same as it was in 2012. Mexico, Angola, and Algeria exhibit declining volumes of flared gas over that period, while the United States, Brazil, and Canada exhibit rising volumes. Flaring was relatively constant in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and China over that period.
For over a decade, gas flaring has been concentrated in nine countries: Russia, Iran, Iraq, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, and Mexico. Those countries accounted for three quarters of gas flaring in 2023.3 The nine leading flaring nations accounted for about 60% of the world’s oil production in 2023.
Beyond the quantity of oil produced, the flaring intensity of oil production also influences the volume of gas flared. Flaring intensity is measured as the ratio of the volume of gas burned (cubic meters) to the amount of oil produced (barrels per day). For a given level of oil production, a higher flaring intensity results in a greater volume of gas combusted.
Countries exhibit a wide range in flaring intensities for several reasons:
• Oil fields have varying amounts of associated natural gas.
• Countries have varying levels of natural gas pipelines and processing facilities that capture gas.
• Countries have varying regulatory frameworks such as flaring limits and gas capture mandates, and varying levels of enforcement
• Countries have varying rates of offshore oil production where space limitation and access to pipelines are more limited compared to onshore production.
• Countries have varying economic incentives to capture natural gas, including domestic gas demand, LNG export capacity, and natural gas prices.
Just 10 large international oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, Repsol, Shell, and TotalEnergies—are responsible for 7% of global flaring, based on their ownership percentages in flaring assets.4 Flaring by international oil companies includes the facilities that they operate, plus facilities in which they have an ownership stake regardless of whether they operate the facility.
The Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 (ZRF) Initiative was launched by the World Bank in 2015 to eliminate routine flaring of natural gas during oil production by 2030. The initiative is backed by governments, oil companies, and development institutions, all of which commit to stopping routine flaring and instead capturing and utilizing the gas. Signatories also pledge to publicly report their flaring data and track progress toward the goal. Regular monitoring is carried out by the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) Partnership.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) is a CEO-led organization of major global oil and gas companies that has pledged to reduce methane emissions. Specifically, the OGCI pledges to “…end upstream routine flaring and achieve near zero methane emissions by 2030.”5
Pledges and voluntary commitments have a very mixed record across-the-board in reducing greenhouse gas emissions of all types. In the case of flaring, countries such as Norway, Brazil, Kuwait, Canada, and the United States achieved notable declines in flaring intensity from 2012 to 2023. But flaring intensities increased in dozens of countries in that same period including large increases in Venezuela, Iran, and Mexico.
The oil and gas industry is falling behind key targets needed to reduce flaring to levels aligned with global climate goals. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero Emissions Scenario calls for a 95% reduction in flaring by 2030, targeting a flaring intensity of 0.3 cubic meters per barrel of oil produced. However, few of the largest flaring companies currently meet this standard when flaring levels are averaged across all assets, including both operated and non-operated facilities.6
1 The World Bank, “Gas Flaring Explained, accessed January 29, 2025, Link
2 The World Bank, “Gas Flaring Data, accessed January 29, 2025, Link
3 The World Bank, op cit., note 2 above
4 Feldman, Lesley, Heny Patel, and James Turitto, “Flaring Accountability: Global gas flaring by major oil and gas companies and their partners,” Clean Air Task Force, November 12, 2024, https://www.catf.us/resource/flaring-accountability/
5 Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, “Methane intensity target,” accessed February 1, 2025, https://www.ogci.com/methane-emissions/methane-intensity-target
6 Feldman et al., op cit.
