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Gas flaring in Azerbaijan, host of the UN COP29 climate summit, hit a decade high in 2023, analysis by a campaign group has found, with facilities involving BP and the state oil company being among the culprits.
Flaring is the burning, instead of capturing, of gas that occurs when drilling for oil, and is a major source of emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, as well as black soot, that contributes heavily to global warming.
The analysis of satellite data undertaken by Global Witness, the non-profit organisation, found the volume of gas flared at oil and gas installations in Azerbaijan had increased by 10.5 per cent since 2018, the last year the country had reported its greenhouse gas emissions.
Flaring increased at several facilities operated or owned by BP, a big player in Azeri oil and gas, and state oil company Socar over that period, despite “numerous pledges” by both the companies and the country to eliminate the practice from their oil and gas production by 2030.
The activity in Azerbaijan had “gone largely unnoticed” because the country “hasn’t bothered to report its emissions in six years”, said Patrick Galey, a senior investigator at Global Witness.
Under the Paris Agreement to tackle global temperature rises, countries are required to report their emissions data every two years.
Methane is responsible for about a third of human-caused warming in the industrial era. It retains far greater heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. More than 155 countries have signed a global pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, including Azerbaijan.
Its reduction in the atmosphere is regarded by scientists as among the most effective ways of limiting climate change in the near term.
But World Bank tracking using satellite data shows that global gas flaring remains near annual record levels, at 148 billion cubic meters in 2023 or barely below the pre-pandemic peak of nearly 150 bcm in 2019.
Azerbaijan’s role as host of COP29 in November has already come under criticism, with campaigners and some politicians questioning the appropriateness of yet another fossil fuel-producing nation overseeing the world’s most important summit to address climate change.
Global Witness found the rate of gas flaring had increased more than 70 per cent in the past six years, using the data provided by the Colorado School of Mines’ VIIRS Nightfire service for 18 onshore and offshore oil and gas installations within Azeri territory. More than 1,000 separate flaring events were captured by satellites since September 2018.
Flaring remained high at several BP facilities, including the vast Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field in the Caspian Sea and the Sangachal terminal south of Baku, said Global Witness.
It added that the volume flared at ACG last year almost equalled the record high reached in 2014, despite oil production there now being significant lower.
The analysis found the Sangachal terminal had already flared nearly 40mn cubic metres of gas in the first half of 2024, putting it “comfortably on course for its highest annual flare rate ever”. The Sangachal flaring uptick came as BP installed a $6bn new oil platform.
BP said flaring from its upstream operations globally had fallen by almost 60 per cent globally over the past decade, and that it was on track to end routine flaring by 2030.
It added a caveat about annual output and individual operations. “The amount flared, both overall and at any given asset, can vary from year to year. At a particular asset, this can be due to factors such as a significant maintenance programme or an unexpected outage,” it said.
The company said it had been operating in the Caspian Sea region for more than 30 years, and had not identified “any exceedances of applicable air quality environmental standard” since 2019 around the Sangachal terminal. “Air quality or health-related concerns have not been raised through the channels made available to community members,” it added.
Socar did not respond to a request for comment, and the COP29 organising group declined to comment.
Azerbaijan’s ministry of ecology said there had been a delay with reporting its emissions because of the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors, but it expected to submit its data by the end of the year.
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