Iran Passes Law to Curtail Gas Flaring

The government is obliged to curb the flaring of natural gas to 10% or lower by 2021, according to a law passed by the Majlis on Sunday.

The measure was part of a slew of ratifications by the legislature related to the sixth economic, social and cultural development plan (2016-21), Shana reported.

It stipulates that the government should prepare the ground for private investors to launch gas-flaring reduction projects in all oil and gas fields by easing the terms and conditions of investment in an effort "to collect and reduce at least 90% of associated petroleum gases by the end of the sixth plan period".

Flaring is the burning of natural gas that cannot be processed or sold. The flaring of associated petroleum gases (APG) is an important safety measure at many oil and gas production sites as it prevents industrial plant equipment from over-pressuring and exploding.

However, burning high levels of APG is seen as a major source of pollution because large amounts of harmful emissions are released in the environment through gas flaring.

An estimated 3.5% of the world’s natural gas supplies were wastefully burned at oil and gas fields in 2012, British scientific journal 'Nature' reported last year, citing estimates from satellite data.

The United States has the largest number of flares, but Russia leads the world in the total volume of flared natural gas, the report said, placing Iran among the top three gas-flaring countries after Russia and Iraq.

In many oil and gas fields, producers deem it faster and cheaper to burn natural gas than to capture and use it, typically because they lack pipelines to economically transport the gas to market.

In 2011, the Iraqi government awarded a $17.2-billion project to Royal Dutch Shell to capture and process APG from three giant oilfields in the country's south—Rumaila, West Qurna phase 1, and Zubair.

--- APG Initiatives

Iran's Oil Ministry is studying several ways to curb APG levels; collecting it for injection into oil and gas wells, converting APG into petroleum products such as natural gas liquids, and using APG for electricity generation.

The ministry signed a contract last year to sell 1.2 million cubic meters per day of APG to a privately domestic company to be used as feedstock for power plants. The gases were to be collected from four oilfields

"Iran has the highest rate of energy waste in the form of APG in the Middle East, and ranks third in the world in terms of gas flaring," according to Bijan Alipour, head of the National Iranian South Oil Company.

According to a report by the Majlis Research Center, around 17 billion cubic meters of gas is burned off in Iran annually which translates into a $4-6 billion loss for the treasury.