Estimating global oilfield-specific flaring with uncertainty using a detailed geographic database of oil and gas fields

Abstract

Associated gas flaring during crude oil production is an important contributor to global warming. Satellite technology has made global flaring monitoring possible with high spatial resolution. In this study, we construct a granular database to geographically match global oil and gas fields with remote sensing flaring data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite from 2012 to 2019. The geographic information system database contains over 50 000 oil and gas fields and around 4700 infrastructure sites (e.g. refineries, terminals) in 51 countries and regions, representing 96% of global oil production and 89% of natural gas production. Over 2900 fields and 140 infrastructure sites in 47 countries contain matching flares. The annual matched flare volume covers 89%–92% of the satellite-estimated flaring volume of these countries and 85%–87% of total worldwide volume detected by the satellite. In 2019, a set of 263 ‘high-flare’ fields (which flare more than 0.1 billion cubic meters per year) account for 67% of the total matched satellite-estimated volume. These fields are mainly concentrated in the Persian Gulf, West and East Siberia, Eastern Venezuela Basin, Permian and Williston Basins in the United States, the Gulf of Mexico, and West and North Africa. Accounting for asymmetric instrument uncertainty suggests that country-level flaring rates are accurate to within −8% to +29%, the global average within 1%.