Flaring soared at refineries during freeze
Flaring at U.S. refineries reached an 18-month high in February as the facilities halted operations during the bitter cold winter storm, according to a monthly analysis of satellite data.
Flared or vented gas at refineries and similar facilities reached a record 180.9 million cubic feet per day, Norwegian Research firm Rystad Energy said, during the unprecedented storm that in Texas killed dozens and left millions of people without water and power. The near-record cold forced oil refineries, gas plants and LNG terminals to enact emergency safety measures that included burning off unusually large amounts of natural gas. Rystad said.
Rystad said it used thermal analysis of satellite data, which produces near real-time information, to reach its conclusion.
At LNG terminals in February, flaring more than doubled as they burned off 29.7 million cubic feet of natural gas per day up from 11.9 million cubic feet per day in January. At gas processing plants, flaring jumped to 87.1 million cubic feet per day, a six
month high, compared with 58.9 million cubic feet per day a month earlier.
The increase in flaring — which releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas — didn’t last, Rystad said, as refineries resumed normal operations after the storm.
“The extreme weather conditions that Texas experienced in February forced many facilities to flare gas, as there was no other exit to feed it into and just immediately closing the gas tap is not possible,” said Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad Energy. “However, our latest daily data suggests that non-upstream flaring has declined again, back to the moderate levels observed in January 2021,”
In a separate analysis, Rystad said flaring at drill sites in December continued to decline. Wellhead gas flaring in the nation’s largest oil fields, including the Permian and North Dakota’s Bakken, fell to just more than 450 million cubic feet per day, Rystad said citing state data. The new figure is about 70 percent less than the high of 1.47 billion cubic feet per day in June 2019 and 10 percent less than the previous low of 480 million cubic feet per day in May 2020, when oil production plummeted during the pandemic.
Wellhead flaring in December fell to about 200 million cubic feet per day in West Texas’s Permian Basin and 180 million cubic feet per day in the Bakken region. Analysis of more immediate satellite data, however, shows that flaring appeared to increase in the Permian just after the storm, which may have reduced burn-off to levels not seen since July 2020
The Permian Basin, which stretches from West Texas into eastern New Mexico, produces about one-third of the nation’s crude oil and 15.8 percent of the nation’s natural gas. March crude output is expected to be about 75,000 barrels a day less than before the storm, according to research and analysis firm IHS Markit.