Flaring wastes enough natural gas to heat every American home for a year.Nathan VanderKlippe
The flaring of natural gas at oilfields can only be phased out by a concerted worldwide effort
That blue-orange natural gas flame you see shooting out of the stack at an oilfield is called flaring. Approximately 150 billion cubic metres of gas is flared, or burned off, each year. That's about 5 per cent of global natural gas production, the equivalent of 2.4 million barrels of oil per day, and enough gas to supply every U.S. residence for an entire year − all gone to waste.
Nobody likes flaring − not environmentalists, scientists, regulators or the oil industry.
So why is it happening?
Gas is burned off because at oil wells, there's currently not much else that can be done with it. It comes to the surface along with the oil; when there's not enough to justify spending on the infrastructure to market it, the gas gets flared.
Apart from the waste of energy, flaring is a health risk, releasing greenhouse gases, sulphur dioxide and methane into the air. Some 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide get spewed out globally from flaring each year, the equivalent of CO from 77 million cars.
Canada is far from the worst country for flaring natural gas, though it is number 12 in the top 20, just behind China. The Canadian record has been heading in the wrong direction, though.
The Alberta Energy Regulator reported that in 2005, 96.3 per cent of gas separated from oil or bitumen production was recovered. Recovery rates had been going up for a decade, but by 2011, the rate had dropped to 94.5 per cent. Blame high labour costs and low natural gas prices.
The boom in shale energy across North America makes it more important than ever to deal with flaring, argues a public-private partnership called the Global Gas Flaring Reduction. "As shale gains prominence in the national energy mix of many of the world's developing nations, the lack of infrastructure for processing flare gas should be a serious concern," the group says in an online editorial this year, in advance of a flaring management conference it held in Houston in January of 2014. "We would do well as an industry and a species to treat this issue as vociferously as possible."
Flaring could be more or less eliminated within five years if the world would put its mind to it, according Michael F. Farina of GE Energy Global Strategy and Planning. "The technology to address the problem exists today and the policy reforms required are largely understood," he wrote in a paper called Flare Gas Reduction published by GE Energy. Realistically, he said, it will take a decade or more to curb flaring, because of the political will it requires to get countries to work together.
The technologies exist already. It's a matter of capturing natural gas so it can be used or sold, which is done every day, instead of burning and wasting it. The challenge is to use the right methods in different oilfields so it becomes cost effective.
There are several proven technologies. Distributed power generation (using the gas for local, small-scale generation) is one. In areas where there's demand for energy, the gas can be used for gas-fired electricity generation, although this requires infrastructure to capture and transport the gas. It can also be turned into liquefied natural gas. Most of all, as Farina pointed out, flare gas needs to be managed.
That requires stronger international cooperation. There is an agreement called the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Initiative (GGFR), a public-private partnership led by the World Bank. It was created in 2002 and its members have approved gas flaring reduction plans up to 2015.
The GGFR works on initiatives to make it easier to finance and apply the technology that already exists to use gas instead of flaring it. For example, it encourages areas to pool their gas supplies so it will be worthwhile to build the infrastructure to market it instead of flaring.
These are steps in the right direction, says Peter Evans, now Vice-President of Strategic Analysis and Trends at the Center for Global Enterprise worked on flaring when he was Director, Global Strategy and Analytics at GE. He has called for more rational regulation of flaring, both to discourage it from being done and to encourage alternatives.
"Gas flaring reduction has the potential to be a great energy and environmental success story," he said. "By creating value from a wasted resource, flare gas reduction enables wider access to energy, improves environmental conditions and provides economic development for local, provincial and national governments."
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This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's advertising department, in consultation with GE. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.