What are the environmental costs of gas combustion?

Norway-based Rystad Energy, which recently analyzed activity at the Portovaya LNG facility under construction, not far from the Nord Stream 1 pipeline into the Baltic Sea, said Russia was burning gas that would normally supply Europe.Relations with the West did not deteriorate due to Moscow’s invasion Ukraine.

Flaring is often a common practice near oil fields and processing plants around the world, where companies burn gases produced as a by-product of the various processes involved in oil exploration and production.

Flaring is often employed by companies when they lack sufficient infrastructure or financial incentives to bring natural gas to market, or when natural gas needs to be released for safety reasons to manage pressure changes during crude oil extraction.

A large amount of natural gas is currently lost each year due to flaring. According to the World Bank, by 2021, thousands of flares in oil production sites around the world will burn some 144 billion cubic meters of natural gas — enough to power the entire sub-Saharan Africa region, or nearly two-thirds of the European Union Net Power Generation.

How does it affect the environment?

Combustion is considered more environmentally friendly than venting the gas directly into the atmosphere.

“If there’s too much gas in some part of your grid, you have to release it, and of course it’s better for the climate to burn it because you can greatly reduce the impact of greenhouse gases, rather than release natural gas because it’s CH4 [methane],” said Stefan Lechtenböhmer, Professor and Director of Future Energy and Industrial Systems at the Wuppertal Institute, a German think tank.

Methane is about 80 times more likely to contribute to global warming over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide released from combustion.

Still, natural gas flaring is considered economically unproductive and a key climate issue. “You have CO2 emissions, but nothing useful: you don’t generate electricity, you don’t generate heat, you don’t drive industrial processes, etc.,” says Lechtenböhmer.

Gas wasted from flaring, emissions and methane leaks in oil and gas operations will result in approximately 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in 2021. According to the International Energy Agency, by 2050, preventing such losses would have the same impact on global temperature rise as immediately eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from all the world’s cars, trucks and buses.

Potential Impact of Russian Gas Flare

Zongqiang Luo, senior natural gas and LNG analyst at Rystad Energy, said the sheer volume of gas burning at Russian LNG facilities makes it a particularly worrying case. “Normal standard procedures don’t burn that much gas.”

Although it is difficult to accurately calculate the exact amount of gas lost from burning at Portovaya, Rystad estimates it to be about 4.34 million cubic meters per day. This is equivalent to 1.6 billion cubic meters per year, or about 0.5% of the EU’s annual gas demand.

Rystad Energy describes the situation as an “environmental catastrophe”, emitting around 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day.

Lechtenböhmer says this daily gas burn corresponds to approximately 10-12% of the gas currently being transported through Nord Stream 1 per day.

R. Andreas Kraemer, founder of the nonprofit Institute for Ecology, said: “This is the largest type of environmental crime — it’s long-lasting, it lasts for months, and as we know it now, it’s very visible. .” Research Institute in Berlin.

Russian gas giant Gazprom has cut flow through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just 20% of capacity since mid-July, blaming technical reasons such as equipment failures.

Germany denies the argument and says the cut in gas supplies is a political move by the West to impose sanctions on Moscow over the war in Ukraine.

After Russia cut off supplies to its European customers, some believed it could not divert the gas anywhere else and chose to burn it.

Gazprom is building plants to burn natural gas, according to Rystad Energy, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Black carbon pollution and the Arctic

Experts such as Kramer have also expressed concern about the pollution of black carbon, commonly known as soot, produced during combustion, caused by incomplete combustion of fuels such as natural gas. Black carbon is an important contributor to global warming, converting solar radiation into heat and influencing rainfall patterns.

Cramer said the northern location of the Portovaya flare was worrying.

“I think from that position, it [black carbon] would go a long way,” he said, explaining that the heat could have caused it to rise to high altitudes, where it could be blown very far. “They [black carbon particles] will eventually fall to the ground. If they land on snow, they alter the absorption of sunlight by the surface of the snow or ice, accelerating Arctic melting. “

By calculating the estimated flow through the flare, it is likely that this single flare is currently producing more black carbon than the entire country of Finland, said Matthew Johnson, professor and head of the Energy and Emissions Laboratory at Carleton University in Canada.

Daily flaring at the Portovaya LNG facility is equivalent to about 6 percent of Russia’s estimated daily flaring in 2021, the World Bank said, according to Rystad’s analysis. Much of Russia’s burning is driven by small oil production in fields in East Siberia.

By volume, the country burns more natural gas than any other country in the world, topping countries such as Iraq, Iran, the United States and Venezuela.

According to Niko Bauer, a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, Russia is not doing enough to reduce the flaring of natural gas.

“The Russian government planned to reduce gas flaring from 12% of associated gas to less than 5%, the share achieved by countries with advanced gas production industries. However, this has not been achieved.”