Environment Report 2018

Gas Flaring Gas flaring is subject to consent under the PetroleumAct 1998, which aims to conserve gas by avoiding unnecessary wastage during hydrocarbon production. Operators are expected to minimise flaring as far as possible and all flaring activity must be reported in EEMS, with consents for specific flare volumes over a limited timeframe granted by the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA). As part of the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, there is a proposal to revise gas flaring definitions into routine flaring, safety flaring and non-routine flaring. 8 An initiative under this partnership aims to eradicate routine flaring by 2030 and has been endorsed by companies and governments globally. The UK is signed up through membership with the EU and seven operators in the UK are also partners in the initiative. e) were flared on the UKCS in 2017 – a 5 per cent increase on 2016. While operators continually look to reduce the amount of gas they flare, the majority of installations are fitted with technology that allows for routine flaring, in line with policy at the time of design and commissioning. Retrospective changes to the design of these installations would be difficult due to limited physical space and the additional costs may be disproportionate to the environmental benefit. Flare gas is reported under EEMS as either routine, maintenance, process upsets, well testing or gross, as shown in Figure 13. Gross is reported when a breakdown is not available and could therefore be the result of any of the categories. Just over 1.3 million tonnes of gas (around 3.7 million tonnes of CO 2

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Figure 13: Breakdown of Gas Flaring by Source

Well Testing Upsets/Other

Routine Maintenance Gross

1,400,000

1,200,000

1,000,000

800,000

600,000

400,000 Total Gas Flared (Tonnes)

200,000

0

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Source: EEMS October 2018

8 See www.worldbank.org/en/programs/gasflaringreduction

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