Up in flames: industry and governments are trying to curb gas flaring
Flaring 'burned off $40bn in 2006'
A new US study has claimed that gas worth about $40 billion - a volume equivalent to 5.5% of the world's total production - was flared last year, according to reports.
The study, an analysis carried out using satellite images taken by the US Defense Metereological Satellite Program, a branch of the US Air Force, was carried out by a World Bank-backed partnership that brings together producers and governments in a bid to reduce flaring.
Governments and the upstream industry have been attempting to cut back on flaring for years, but the new study suggests that their efforts have had little success, a report published in this morning's Financial Times said.
The total volume of gas flared has been roughly steady at about 150 billion to 170 billion cubic metres per year since the mid-1990s, the FT said.
The study found that Russia had the highest level of flaring, in 2004 burning off more than twice as much gas as Nigeria, the second highest.
Officially reported figures showed Nigeria as having the highest level of flaring, but the satellite pictures suggested that Russia was flaring much more gas than it had admitted.
Russia has also shown a bigger increase in flaring over the past 12 years than any other country, the study found.
Nigeria, which has promised to end flaring by 2008, showed the biggest reduction of any country, cutting its flaring by 10 Bcm over the 12-year period, a reduction of about a third.
Other countries and regions that have cut flaring include the Gulf of Mexico, Algeria, the North Sea and Indonesia. Nations that appear to have increased flaring include Saudi Arabia, China and Kazakhstan.