Key reasons to read this article
- Why are billions of cubic meters of gas still being deliberately burnt every year despite available alternatives?
- Who profits from routine gas flaring, and who ultimately pays the real price?
- Why have decades of bans, global research and proven technology failed to end one of the oil industry’s oldest practices?
- Why does routine gas flaring remain as much a governance and investment challenge as an environmental issue?
Long before sunrise reaches Gelegele, a fishing community in Nigeria’s Edo State, the sky has already been lit by another source: a towering gas flare that has burned day and night for years. For the residents, the flame has become an unwanted landmark and a symbol of a harmful practice whose costs are not shared equally.
For Serah, a lifelong resident, the consequences are immediate: the quality of the air she breathes, the crops that struggle to grow, and the dwindling fish stocks that once sustained local livelihoods.
For Patience, a 42-year-old farmer in the community, the impacts of the flaring have been devastating. Her cassava farm, located a few kilometers from the flare site, no longer produces what it once did. She previously processed about 50 bags of garri per harvest, whereas now she produces only around 10 bags, dramatically slashing her income.
Gelegele is far from unique. Across oil-producing regions, from Nigeria and Iraq to Ecuador and the United States, tens of millions of people still live within sight of gas flares that were originally designed as temporary safety measures but have since become permanent features of the landscape.
Their presence exposes one of the oil industry’s biggest paradoxes. At a time when governments worry about energy security and electricity shortages, billions of cubic meters of usable natural gas are deliberately burnt every year. The technology to reduce routine flaring exists and governments have pledged to eliminate it. Yet global flaring levels remain stubbornly high.
The world’s top flaring countries
Just nine countries account for approximately 83% of globally flared gas but they produce less than half of the world’s oil. Russia, Mexico, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, and the U.S. are the world’s largest culprits.
Energy expert Mark Thurber argues that countries with high flaring rates usually share one characteristic: they have oil fields rich in gas but lack the pipelines or buyers for it. Nigeria exemplifies this contradiction. Despite chronic domestic power shortages and growing gas demand, the country continues to flare up to 9 billion cubic meters of gas annually, which could instead support electricity generation and industrial production or be exported.
Politics also shapes the pace of progress. Most of the above-mentioned countries face challenges that extend beyond economics: international sanctions, armed conflicts, political instability or the dominance of state-owned companies. In these environments, reducing routine flaring often becomes a lower priority than maintaining oil production and export revenues.
A safety measure that evolved into business as usual
Gas flaring started as an emergency safety measure. Oil wells often produce natural gas alongside crude oil. If operators cannot immediately capture or transport that gas, it is burnt off to prevent a dangerous build-up of pressure.
The problem is that what was initially intended as a temporary safety practice has become routine in many oil-producing regions.
The conventional explanation involves economics. According to analysts of the Environmental Defense Fund, while some flaring is unavoidable, much of it reflects commercial rather than engineering decisions. Building pipelines and processing facilities requires substantial upfront investment, while simply burning the gas is often cheaper in the short term, they note.
However, the World Bank argues that long-term economics tell a different story. According to its latest assessment, the upfront investment required to eliminate routine flaring is estimated to be US$70- 00 billion globally but if the captured gas was brought to market, it could generate around US$54 billion in revenues annually.
The technology needed to achieve that goal is already well established. The gas involved could be compressed, transported by pipeline, reinjected into reservoirs, converted into liquefied natural gas or used to generate electricity close to the production sites.
In other words, eliminating routine flaring is costly, but far from uneconomic in the longer term. Much of the investment could ultimately pay for itself.
So why do the flames keep burning?
Part of the answer lies in incentives. Companies and governments must bear the investment costs today, while the financial returns would arrive only gradually. As long as they do not have to pay compensation for damage to health and the environment, flaring is still a more viable option.
Regulation also plays a decisive role. Despite repeated national and international commitments, global flaring levels have changed little over the past decade.
Nigeria, for instance, officially prohibited routine flaring in 1984 and more than 100 governments and companies have endorsed the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative. Yet global flaring levels reached about 167 billion cubic meters in 2025, highlighting the gap between commitments and implementation.
In many oil-producing countries, the penalties for routine flaring frequently remain lower than the cost of building recovery infrastructure, or alternatively they are seldom enforced. As a result, companies may conclude that continuing to flare makes better financial sense despite the high environmental and health costs.
Who pays the real cost?
While governments debate infrastructure development and investors calculate the returns, the costs are already being borne elsewhere.
According to the World Bank, flaring released approximately 389 million tons of CO₂-equivalent in 2024, accounting for about 1% of the greenhouse emissions from the global energy sector. The gas burned each year could instead meet Africa’s annual gas demand.
Climate impacts, however, tell only part of the story. Communities living near flare sites face the most immediate consequences.
Research has linked long-term exposure to flare emissions with preterm births, pediatric asthma, nose and throat irritation, and even cancer, since benzene in flare gas is known as a carcinogen.
In Mexico, residents of communities near Pemex facilities have reported headaches, coughs, burning eyes and skin, foul smells, ash rains and polluted soil. A study conducted in the USA’s North Dakota estimated that if there had been a ban on flaring in place, there would have been 11,000 fewer cases of asthma and respiratory conditions during the oil boom.
Across very different countries, the pattern seems to be similar: governments collect oil revenues, companies profit from production but nearby communities absorb a disproportionate share of the environmental and health burden.
The result is a paradox: countries acknowledge that routine flaring should end, but economic and political incentives often encourage it to continue. Yet the progress made by several major oil producers, including Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Algeria, Oman, and Kuwait, shows that higher oil production does not have to mean higher levels of flaring. With the right policies, infrastructure in place, and effective enforcement, flaring can be significantly reduced.
How much longer?
Ending routine flaring will not happen overnight. In some regions, building pipelines, gas-processing plants and electricity infrastructure will take years. In others, political instability or sanctions will continue to complicate investment, World Bank specialists have noted.
But experts increasingly argue that routine flaring should no longer be viewed as an unavoidable consequence of oil production. It is a problem that can be significantly reduced when governments, investors and companies align commercial incentives with environmental and public health objectives.
For communities like Gelegele, however, the debate is not about infrastructure investment or energy economics. It is about whether farms remain productive, whether children breathe cleaner air and whether livelihoods can survive alongside oil production.