Explainer: Why Venezuela Needs To Reduce Its Gas Flaring

The red and orange illuminated night in Venezuela may look beautiful, but they are a result of gas flaring in the oil fields of Monagas. To meet its Paris Agreement goals, the Caribbean country needs to address gas flaring. How easy will this be in a country where it’s gas and oil energy sector accounts for more than two-thirds of its greenhouse gas emissions?

This photo of the Caribbean Sea taken in 2021 is the above view of the western side of Venezuela’s Paraguaná Peninsula. The smoke plume running across the middle of the image appears to originate at a gas flare (mechurrio) of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex. Credit: NASA

CARACAS, Sep 18 2024 (IPS) – The most visible part of gas flaring in Venezuela is the so-called “Monagas illuminated nights.” These are red and orange skies, which are visible from the homes of the locals at night and which show the gas flaring in the oil fields of Monagas, a state located in the east of the Caribbean country and key in its oil production.

Venezuela was the fifth country in the world with the highest gas flaring by volume during 2023, according to the Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report carried out by the World Bank.

The estimate was that Venezuela flared 8.31 billion cubic meters of gas (bcm) during 2023. This is just 1.32 bcm less than that flared by an oil giant like the United States, which ranked fourth in the global gas flaring ranking and produced at least 10 times more oil than Venezuela.

Reducing gas flaring in Venezuela is a key fact in the coming years of the Paris Agreement, considering that its energy sector (mostly powered by oil and gas) accounts for 66.2% of its total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Emission Index.

Gas flaring is a practice to remove gas associated with oil production, used mostly in small and dispersed oil fields. It is a method that is usually evidenced by the burning flares that are often seen at a distance from oil fields.

It is considered a safe method to avoid explosions in oil installations, but polluting because in the process carbon dioxide (CO2) and also methane (CH4) are released into the atmosphere. This concentration of gas emissions is what allows the skies to turn red and orange at night, as occurs in Monagas.

As in the rest of the oil-producing countries, gas flaring has been used in Venezuela for several decades. “The Venezuelan oil industry saw gas as a burden, not as a solution. It was not even used in the reinjection fields to extract more crude,” explained engineer Oswaldo Felizzola, coordinator of the International Energy and Environment Center of the Institute of Higher Studies in Administration (IESA), in an interview with IPS.

Russia ranks first among the world’s largest gas flaring countries. Credit: Margaret López/IPS

How much gas is flared in Venezuela?

The state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) pledged to reduce its gas flaring between 2016 and 2017. However, there is currently no official Venezuelan data on how much gas is flared in the fields of Monagas and Anzoátegui, two states with extensive daily gas flaring and whose nighttime lighting is so powerful that it was captured by NASA satellite images.

It is also unknown how much gas is being flared at Amuay and Cardón, the main Venezuelan refineries located in the northwest of the Caribbean country.

The private firm Gas Energy Latin America has an estimate that PDVSA loses 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas daily between what is flared and what is simply vented into the atmosphere. This practice was consolidated in Venezuela thanks to the low prices associated with gas compared to oil.

“Gas has had no real value and was always subsidized in Venezuela. The large quantities of leftover methane gas extracted from the fields have no economics. There are no facilities to collect it and, for that reason, it was not sold,” said Juan Szabo, an international energy consultant and former president of production for PDVSA between 1995 and 1999, in an interview with IPS.

Szabo also explained that the 1.7 billion cubic feet of gas lost daily in Venezuela are equivalent to more than the amount of gas consumed in all of Colombia in one day.

Gas flaring is also recognized as a practice of oil companies that wastes natural resources because part of these gases could be used for everyday activities such as cooking in homes or powering thermoelectric plants that provide electricity in the regions of the Caribbean country.

What options does Venezuela have to reduce its gas flaring?

The World Bank highlighted in its most recent report that Venezuela has been decreasing its gas flaring volumes for three consecutive years. During 2023, for example, there was a total reduction of 4% of its gas flaring volumes, mostly from oil fields located in the north of the Monagas state. The big question, however, is how a sustainable policy can be put together to minimize this polluting practice.

Experts Felizzola and Szabo agree that a cost-effective option would be to capture this gas and then re-inject it into fields to improve oil production in the Caribbean country.

“You have to rehabilitate the compression plants and the extraction plants, which would no longer have to be so sophisticated because the reservoir pressure has also dropped. This would help reinject methane gas into the system and improve oil production,” Szabo explained.

Another option is to install pipelines to recover gases such as propane and butane, which can be used directly for sale in the local market, both to industries and to ordinary citizens for their kitchens. However, this project requires a high initial investment, which Venezuela does not have and which could be obtained through financing from multilateral entities interested in promoting a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in small oil-producing countries.

The third option to reduce gas flaring volumes would be creating a system to capture, process, store, and export these gases to markets such as Colombia, Brazil, or Trinidad and Tobago, all countries bordering Venezuela.

However, Felizzola and Szabo also warned that none of these options would be viable without Venezuela first establishing a gas price governed by international standards and cutting subsidies. A public policy more focused on gas as a valuable asset depends on reducing its flaring and its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The irony is that the least costly and easiest plan to implement is just to re-inject this gas to increase oil production in this Caribbean country.

This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.