The investigation, conducted by Alexandre Brutelle and Léopold Salzenstein from EIF, alongside Jan Philippin from Mediapart and Daraj Media, was supported by the Journalism Fund Europe.
Gas flaring, which involves burning excess natural gas at oil fields, plants, and hydrocarbon production facilities, has devastating costs for local populations, wildlife, and the environment. Additionally, it is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions from the fossil fuel industry, exacerbating the effects of climate change.
According to the latest annual report from the World Bank, gas flaring generated 381 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions globally in 2023. This enormous quantity represents 1 percent of total global emissions, surpassing even the annual emissions of an entire country like France, which recorded 315 million tons of CO2 emissions in the previous year, according to the European Emissions Database from the Global Atmospheric Research Program.
However, most data concerning the toxic flares produced by these oil giants remain unknown due to a lack of transparency. Available statistics only account for total emissions per country. While some oil companies have joined World Bank initiatives and the Carbon Disclosure Project, publicly reporting their global gas flaring data, they often omit crucial details.
For the first time, “Burning Skies” exposes the individual responsibility of each oil company involved in this destructive practice.
Using satellite imagery and geospatial data provided by the Earth Observation Group, which monitors nighttime lights and combustion sources globally, along with the non-profit organization SkyTruth, and research from open sources, the investigation identified thousands of flares associated with over 650 oil and natural gas facilities (including oil fields, liquefied natural gas plants, and oil refineries) in 18 countries across Africa and the Middle East. The investigation estimated the emissions produced between 2012 and 2022 and attributed them to the operating companies.
In these two regions, the investigation found that oil companies were responsible for an estimated 1.37 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the decade. According to our estimations, European oil companies were the largest source of pollution from gas flaring, accounting for 33 percent of emissions, surpassing companies from the Middle East (31 percent) and North America (14 percent).
Five major European companies ranked among the top ten contributors to CO2-equivalent emissions from 2012 to 2022. British Petroleum (BP) ranked second, with total emissions of 133 million tons, followed by Italy’s Eni in third place with 121 million tons. TotalEnergies of France ranked fifth with 63 million tons, followed by France’s Perenco-Anglo in sixth place with 50 million tons. Shell, the British-Dutch oil giant, came in seventh, with 47 million tons of emissions.
This investigation sheds light on the critical environmental and human toll of gas flaring in Africa and the Middle East, holding oil giants accountable for their role in the climate crisis and its impact on local communities.
American oil giant ExxonMobil ranked fourth in gas flaring emissions, releasing a total of 90 million tons of CO2 over the past decade. However, Algeria’s state-owned oil company, Sonatrach, far surpassed all other companies in the 18 countries covered by the investigation, emitting 235 million tons of CO2 during the same period—nearly four times the emissions of TotalEnergies. Our partner, Daraj, reached out to Sonatrach for comment but received no response regarding these findings.
TotalEnergies told *Mediapart* that using “satellite imagery” as done in the investigation was “highly inaccurate compared to on-site measurements” and could lead to “exaggerated estimates.” However, the company did not provide its own estimates for each of its operational sites.
The Deadly Effects of Methane Gas
In oil and gas fields, as well as in hydrocarbon production facilities, excess natural gas, primarily methane, must be disposed of. Sometimes this is done for safety reasons to prevent explosions. The first option is to release the gas into the air, a process known as “venting,” which is catastrophic due to methane’s heat-trapping ability—84 times greater than CO2 over a 20-year period. Burning methane, while still harmful, is slightly better for the climate, as most of it converts to CO2. However, emissions from gas flaring remain immense, producing a toxic mix of volatile compounds, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter, all known for their destructive impact on health and the environment.
These compounds pollute the air, soil, and water, destroying ecosystems and threatening the health of millions living near gas flaring sites. Respiratory diseases, skin conditions, cancers, and premature births are among the documented health effects. According to a study published in the *Journal of Public Economics*, there is an observed increase in health issues within a 90 km radius of gas flaring sites.
Our partners from Daraj, NRC, Source Material, Oxpeckers, and Mongabay visited seven countries to document the catastrophic effects of gas flaring on local populations, where entire residential areas are at risk, sometimes only 10 km away from these toxic flares operated by oil giants like BP, Eni, Shell, and TotalEnergies.
For some of these companies, the problem isn’t their operations but the presence of local populations themselves.
When our partner NRC questioned Shell about the proximity of local populations to its operations in Nigeria, the company claimed that its “right of way” had been “encroached upon” by local communities. Shell stated that “many of our oil and gas facilities were not originally located in highly populated areas,” adding that it “continues to work with local governments and other stakeholders to discourage communities from encroaching on operational areas.”
The Financial Problem
Despite pledges made by governments and oil companies, the battle against gas flaring remains a losing one. According to the World Bank, global gas flaring emissions increased by 7 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, and there has been no significant decline since 2010. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that global gas flaring “is not on track” to meet the goal of “net zero emissions by 2050.”
The latest World Bank report, published in June 2024, emphasized the “urgent need” for action, stressing that companies are responsible for ensuring that oil and gas production is as pollution-free as possible during the transition to cleaner energy sources.
This issue is further complicated by the fact that gas flaring represents a colossal waste of resources. Despite the availability of advanced technology to capture methane for electricity generation, much of it is flared without being harnessed. This solution is desperately needed in African and Middle Eastern countries, which our “Burning Skies” investigation covers, as they suffer from electricity shortages. According to the World Bank, the methane currently being flared could generate enough electricity to power the entire sub-Saharan Africa region.
The World Bank and the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimate that an investment of around $200 billion would be sufficient to reduce raw methane emissions and end routine gas flaring. This figure represents just 5 percent of the global fossil fuel industry’s annual profits (which totaled $4 trillion in 2022).
While some major oil companies have built facilities to mitigate the effects of gas flaring at certain oil fields, they remain reluctant to invest on a larger scale. This is primarily because flaring is cheaper, and methane capture can impact oil production.
José Antonio García Fernández, a chemical engineering professor at Bilbao Engineering School, explained that “the amount of gas reaching the flare varies, making it difficult to control the process. A stable flow is needed to generate electricity.” Aidan Farrow, a senior researcher at Greenpeace International’s Science Unit, revealed that during an investigation into gas flaring in Iraq with the BBC, an engineer told them that due to these pressure issues, oil production would need to be reduced to capture more gas—but oil companies opted to maintain production levels instead.
Government Complicity
According to Farrow, the primary reason behind the failure to curb gas flaring emissions is the “lack of effective legislation with meaningful consequences,” a fact our investigation confirmed.
Our data shows that over the last decade, oil companies caused an estimated 451 million tons of CO2 emissions across nine African countries where gas flaring is either legally prohibited or allowed only under short-term, exceptional circumstances. These countries include the Republic of the Congo, Angola, Cameroon, Gabon, Nigeria, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, and Algeria. More than half of these emissions (263 million tons) were generated by Western oil giants like TotalEnergies and BP.
This shows that these developing countries are still lenient with oil companies, in stark contradiction to their own laws, in a bid to maximize revenue and production. The situation is not much different in countries with weak or non-existent regulations, such as Iraq and the UAE.
Meanwhile, the European Union, the world’s largest importer of hydrocarbons, continues to ignore this issue. Despite introducing new legislation to combat methane emissions in the energy sector on June 13, 2024, environmental activists consider it insufficient.
The new legislation prohibits gas venting and flaring in EU member states, except in safety-related situations. However, the rules are far more lenient when it comes to imports. While the legislation bans the sale of methane-intensive fossil fuels in Europe, this ban won’t take effect until August 2030, and the maximum methane intensity limits will not be established until 2029. In short, there is no guarantee that the EU will require imported hydrocarbons to meet the same methane intensity standards as those produced within its borders.
The Limitations of Voluntary Pledges
Currently, the fight against gas flaring largely depends on voluntary international initiatives spearheaded by the World Bank, which have been met with skepticism regarding their effectiveness. The Global Methane and Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, launched in 2023 at the UN Climate Change Conference, includes governments, multilateral organizations, and oil companies, all pledging to provide a “new grant” of $255 million. However, this amount is minimal compared to the $100 billion the World Bank deems necessary to end “routine flaring”—the continuous flaring of gas unrelated to safety during normal production operations.
In 2015, the World Bank launched its flagship program, the “Zero Routine Flaring by 2030” initiative, which garnered support from governments and oil companies, including all those heavily involved in gas flaring, except Perenco. These companies pledged to end routine flaring by 2030. However, in their reports to the World Bank, seven European oil companies (BP, Eni, Equinor, Repsol, Shell, TotalEnergies, and Wintershall) declared that only 32 percent of the flaring they conducted in 2022 was classified as “routine.” This implies that even if they meet their pledges, most of their emissions will continue.
There are significant discrepancies between these companies, raising doubts about the accuracy of their methodologies. Despite massive emissions, BP claims that only 1.7 percent of its flaring is routine, compared to 17.5 percent for TotalEnergies, while Eni and Repsol report that over 50 percent of their flaring is routine.
These figures also contradict those in a study published by the IEA, which found that 66 percent of global flaring is classified as routine. When asked about this discrepancy by the European Investigative Collaborations network, Thomas de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy and environmental policy analyst at the IEA, explained that the study defines routine flaring as “flares that operate for more than 85 percent of the time.” He added, “Companies may use a different definition.”
Zubin Bamji, a director at the Global Methane and Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GFMR), estimates that routine flaring accounts for about “70 percent of global flaring.” According to Bamji, routine flaring reaches 100 percent in countries like Niger and Cameroon, while it is 0 percent in Denmark and Saudi Arabia.
Currently, there is no unified definition or independent verification of routine flaring levels, which benefits oil giants.
Daniel Zavala-Ariza, a researcher at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Utrecht University, emphasized, “What we need to do is track flaring through direct measurement and continuous monitoring. We have all the tools to do this today. Beyond defining routine flaring, we need to drastically reduce flaring overall.”
How Gas Flaring Is Underreported
Hydrocarbon companies also tend to understate their responsibilities. All major European oil companies report emissions only from facilities they directly operate, excluding fields where they do not hold majority shares, even though they profit from them.
One glaring example is the Rumaila field in southern Iraq, the largest source of pollution in our investigation, with emissions totaling 105 million tons of CO2-equivalent over the last decade. Despite owning a 47.63 percent stake in the Rumaila field, BP claims no responsibility for these emissions and was listed by Iraq’s Ministry of Oil as the operator during this period.
Even when focusing only on facilities directly operated by these companies, we found discrepancies between our estimates and the data reported by some European oil giants, suggesting they are not accurately reporting their emissions.
For BP, when considering only 18 countries, our estimates showed the company’s emissions to be double what it reported globally. BP told our partners at Source Material that it is “working to manage and reduce flaring at the assets it operates,” but did not comment on this discrepancy.
Similarly, our estimates for Eni’s emissions were 2.8 times higher than the company’s global figures for the same period.
Eni told our partner Domani after 10 days that the original data we used “does not allow for the identification of individual assets or the operator responsible,” and requested a review of the asset list we used. After providing the list, the company indicated that “some assets are not managed by or fall outside the scope of Eni,” but did not specify which ones.
Moreover, two recent scientific studies suggest that estimates of emissions from gas flaring, calculated in terms of CO2-equivalent, may actually be much higher than previously thought. Scientific standards used by the World Bank (and in this investigation) assume that 98 percent of methane sent to flares is burned, known as the “combustion efficiency.”
A change in efficiency levels can significantly impact final emission values, as methane has a far greater heat-trapping ability than CO2. According to the World Bank, a 92 percent combustion efficiency results in a 30 percent increase in CO2-equivalent emissions.
A 2021 study by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) measured actual combustion efficiency in the Permian Basin—the largest oil-producing region in the U.S.—using satellites and helicopters equipped with thermal imaging cameras. It found that actual methane emissions from companies were 3.5 times higher than reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
These findings were confirmed in a second study published in Science in 2022, which covered three U.S. oil-producing regions. The study found that only 91 percent of methane was burned, not the 98 percent expected, indicating a “significant underestimation” of gas flaring emissions.
Zavala-Ariza noted, “In other parts of the world, flare efficiency is below 91 percent. Additionally, flares can malfunction, allowing methane to escape, but companies do not report these incidents, so the true emissions are significantly higher.”
Another factor compounding the problem is the black carbon, or soot, produced by gas flaring. These fine particles, known as “black carbon,” are 1,500 times more potent than CO2 and are produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.
The European Geosciences Union estimates that gas flaring contributes about 40 percent of the annual black carbon deposits in the Arctic, which are expected to accelerate atmospheric changes as ice melts in the near future. However, due to our limited understanding of flare efficiency globally, black carbon is not yet included in current flaring efficiency standards.
Aidan Farrow concluded, “Reducing flaring and methane leaks is essential, but I don’t believe this issue can be resolved through investment and technology alone. We need to rethink the bigger picture. The problem of gas flaring underscores the urgent need to move away from fossil fuels.”
