By Marcus Williams.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is joining forces with the World Bank to help governments in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan reduce the waste of a valuable energy source and also combat damage to the environment.
In a joint statement, the two international financial institutions said there are currently significant quantities of petroleum gas, a by-product in oil extraction, are flared or vented into the air.
With this undertaking, the EBRD will also officially join the GGFR partnership, a public-private initiative of some 30 major oil-producing countries and companies that aim to overcome the challenges of dealing with such gases.
In collaboration with various oil and gas companies, the EBRD and the World Bank’s GGFR partnership will manage the production of a ground-breaking market study designed to assess gas venting and flaring operations on about 100 oil sites across the four countries.
The identified four countries are among the world’s major flaring countries. Global gas flaring, estimated last year at 134 billion cubic meters (bcm), is not only a significant waste of a useful energy resource, but it also accounts for some 360 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions globally.
According to latest satellite data, over 40 bcm of this associated gas – or about 30 per cent of global flaring – were flared in Europe and Central Asia in 2010, which amounts to some 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions – roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of some 20 million cars.
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