18th October: Weekly flaring news round up

17 October 2021

FlareIntel

  • Our CEO, Mark Davis, was delighted to be invited to present at the “UK-Algeria Energy Transition and Roadmap to COP26” event jointly held in the embassies of London and Algiers last week.  It was excellent to hear the commitment from Sonatrach not only to deliver zero routine flaring, but to chart a clear roadmap for the country’s energy transition, with bold plans for solar, green H2 and more.
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Industry

  • The IEA’s World Energy Outlook, out last week, charts out progress on the energy transition and spells out what needs to be done.  The report mentions flaring 36 times and makes it clear how critical flare reduction is to meeting our net zero ambitions.  What’s particularly notable is that the IEA has updated its assumption on the combustion efficiency of gas flares – and now believes that the average flare combusts 92% of gas, meaning that so-called “methane slip” is 8%.  This means that the emissions from flaring are 520 million tonnes at a GWP of 30x for methane (over a 100-year basis), or 965 million tonnes at a GWP of 83x (over a 20-years basis).  The IEA’s figure is of 92% is close to our assumption of 90%, as we first published in 2019 (see our “billion tonne secret” article here).
  • We applaud the initiative by the US administration and EU on the Global Methane Pledge, which last week expanded it’s pledging countries to 34 plus the EU, and has been supported by a coalition of 22 philanthropies which have agreed to offer $222 million of funding for this initiative.  
  • It is excellent to see that Apache has ended routine flaring in the US onshore.  This is an excellent example of leadership.  But we should also recognise that Apache has a major flaring position in Egypt, and flaring at it’s key asset – Meleiha – has increased by a factor of 2 to 25 million scf/day.  Assuming a 90% combustion efficiency, this asset alone creates 2 million CO2-equivalent tonnes of GHG emissions.

Above: Mark presenting to an audience in London and Algiers on the role that gas flaring can plan in creating value and accelerating the energy transition.