Reducing flaring in oil and gas operations (2025)

Topic last reviewed: February 2025
Sectors: Midstream, Upstream

Flaring and venting emissions reduction are key enhancers of the climate and sustainability performance of the oil
and gas industry. Flaring and venting mitigation also enables the reduction of the primary energy consumed during operations and therefore enhances the overall efficiency of the production value chain.

Flare systems serve an essential role in protecting against overpressure and safely depressurise systems in response to an incident to protect life, property, and prevent hazard escalation. The following reports are complementary and provide information to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by minimising flaring.

The Ipieca-IOGP-GFMR (formally GGFR)¹ Flaring management guidance for the oil and gas industry provides information to help companies and regulatory bodies to support the World Bank’s Global Flaring and Methane Reduction (GFMR) Partnership’s mission to ‘boost global efforts to end routine gas flaring and reduce methane emissions to the greatest extent possible along the entire oil and gas value chain by providing technical assistance, enabling policy and regulatory reform, institutional strengthening, and mobilizing financing to support action by governments and operators.’ The guidance details new flaring management and reduction developments and examines industry experiences with eliminating flaring, new technologies, business models, operational improvements, and regulatory policy. The GFMR partnership has developed a set of definitions for gas flaring - widely adopted and internationally recognised for flaring characterisation and reporting purposes - which are included in this report.

The IOGP Report 647² Guidelines for the design and operation of flare gas recovery systems provides guidelines to the preliminary evaluation and design considerations of flare gas recovery systems (FGRS) in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. These guidelines are not intended to serve as a design manual or a regulatory compliance document, but rather to provide general guidance on FGRS, based on industry experience.

The guidelines in IOGP Report 647 provide an overview of a FGRS and its typical components, describing the motivations and justifications for, and the potential implications of, installing a FGRS. They then proceed to describe the design of a FGRS and of its major components, namely the flare closure mechanisms and the gas recovery (compression) systems. Since implementation of FGRS will influence how and when the flare ignites, the final section provides an introduction to flare ignition systems.

The IOGP Report 673³ Guidelines for design and operations to minimize and avoid flaring supplements the Ipieca-IOGP-GFMR Flaring management guidance with additional lessons from operators and designers to further reduce flaring sources.

IOGP Report 673 promotes and shares industry experience where technical solutions have resulted in a meaningful reduction of flared gas volumes. It also promotes the advantage of favouring flared gas source reduction.

While the focus of the IOGP Report 673 is the upstream oil and gas industry, many of the principles and practices outlined can be applied to the midstream and downstream sectors.

References

1. IOGP-Ipieca-GFMR Flaring management guidance for the oil and gas industry (IOGP 467)
2. IOGP Report 647 Guidelines for the design and operation of flare gas recovery systems
3. IOGP Report 673 Guidelines for the design and operations to minimize and avoiding flaring