Guardian Exclusive: Fields run by climate summit host have burned gas near daily despite 20-year-old pledge, satellite monitoring reveals
State-run oil and gas fields in the United Arab Emirates have been flaring gas virtually daily despite having committed 20 years ago to a policy of zero routine flaring, the Guardian can reveal.
The UAE is hosting the UN Cop28 summit, which starts on 30 November, and Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the state oil company Adnoc, will preside over the international negotiations to urgently tackle the climate crisis.
Flaring is the burning of extracted gas that is not captured and sold, and it has been called “wasteful and polluting” by the World Bank. Flaring occurs when no equipment has been installed to capture it or when gas has to be unexpectedly released for safety reasons. Flaring also allows the escape of some unburned methane gas, which is a powerful greenhouse gas.
One field, Adnoc LNG, flared gas on more than 99% of the days monitored by satellite from 2018 to 2022, according to data produced for the Guardian by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea). One expert said this was routine flaring “by any normal definition”.
The analysis assessed flaring in 32 oil and gas fields in the UAE, 20 of which are run by Adnoc. It shows four fields flared on at least 97% of the days for which data was available, which was most days as measurements were interrupted by cloud cover on only one day in five.
…