Washington (Platts)--30Aug2007
The amount of natural gas flared globally as part of oil operations has remained largely stable over the past 12 years, in the range of 150 to 170 billion cu m, despite moves by some countries to limit flaring, a World Bank report said Thursday. The World Bank's Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership commissioned and funded the survey, which was executed by scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The survey used satellite data and a series of national and global estimates of gas flaring volumes to determine the amount of gas being flared by about 60 countries or areas around the world from 1995 through 2006, the World Bank said. According to the satellite data, oil producing countries and companies burned about 170 billion cu m or 5 Tcf of gas in 2006. "That's equivalent to 27% of total US natural gas consumption and 5.5% of total global production of natural gas for the year," the World Bank said. "If the gas had been sold in the United States instead of being flared, the total US market value would have been about $40 billion." Gas flaring also emits some 400 million mt of carbon dioxide emissions, the World Bank said. A number of countries, including Nigeria, have declared they are seeking to end gas flaring out of concern for the environment and in hopes to monetize the gas production. Nigeria is one of 16 countries that have exhibited a downward trend in gas flaring in the past 12 years, the report found. Algeria, Libya and Syria also showed drops of greater than 2 Bcm, the World Bank report found. Argentina, Bolivia, Cameroon, Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, the North Sea, Norway, Peru, UAE and the US offshore, were all down. --Cathy Landry, cathy_landry@platts.com This is an excerpt. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Oilgram News at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?src=story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=1_29&products_id=29
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