Russia burning off £8m of gas every day

Russia is burning off millions of pounds’ worth of gas every day near to its border with Europe, causing waste and environmental damage as the continent’s energy costs soar.

Gas that would previously have been exported to Germany is being burnt rather than tapped off or stored, according to experts who have studied a Russian facility near the border with Finland.

They say the liquified natural gas (LNG) plant at Portovaya, northwest of St Petersburg, is burning an estimated $10 million (£8.4 million) worth of gas every day, which comes as energy costs have spiked due to the war in Ukraine.

Scientists are alarmed about the levels of soot and carbon dioxide the burning is generating, which they said could accelerate the melting of Arctic ice.

The environmental and financial costs are rising daily as the flare from the Portovaya plant releases the equivalent of 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a day. Most people in the UK have a secondary carbon footprint — which combines the emissions generated by all the products, services and food a person consumes — of between 2 and 10 tonnes of CO2 per year.

While it is usual for gas or oil facilities to burn off some of their excess fuel for safety or technical reasons, the analysis by Rystad Energy indicates that far larger amounts — about 4.34 million cubic metres of gas — are being “flared” at the Russian plant every day.

Finnish citizens over the border noticed something was afoot when they saw a large flame on the horizon this summer. Since June researchers have also noted a significant increase in heat emanating from the facility.

“I’ve never seen an LNG plant flare so much,” said Dr Jessica McCarty, an expert on satellite data from Miami University in Ohio. “Starting around June, we saw this huge peak, and it just didn’t go away. It’s stayed very anomalously high.”

Portovaya is close to a compressor station at the start of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which transports gas under the sea to Germany.

Russia’s state-owned company Gazprom, which runs Nord Stream 1 and also owns the plant at Portovaya, has permanently lowered the pipeline’s capacity to 20 per cent this summer in the wake of European Union sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Russians have said technical issues are the reason behind the rationing. But Germany argues that it is a tactical move to put pressure on EU governments and increase the cost of living.

On Monday Gazprom said that it was stopping supplies for at least three days of maintenance this week. The delay has caused natural gas prices to rocket by more than 80 per cent this month, with implications for consumers across the Continent, including in Britain.

Germany and other countries have vowed to wean themselves off Russian gas totally by 2024. But in the meantime, EU sanctions have ordered governments and other public bodies to halt existing contracts with Russian companies by October 10.

Some are struggling to meet the deadline, however, including the Dutch city of The Hague, which said yesterday that it would ask for a temporary exemption as it had failed to find a replacement for its contract with Gazprom in time.

Mark Davis, chief executive of Capterio, which provides gas flaring solutions for energy companies, said the flaring at the Russian plant was likely to be a deliberate decision, made for operational reasons.

“Operators often are very hesitant to actually shut down facilities for fear that they may be technically difficult or costly to start up again, and it’s probably the case here,” he told BBC News.

Others believe that there could be technical challenges in stopping the large volumes of gas that were being supplied to the Nord Stream pipeline and that Gazprom decided to flare it off for safety purposes.

But the burning could also be caused by Europe’s trade embargo with Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, the analysts added.

“This kind of long-term flaring may mean that they are missing some equipment,” said Esa Vakkilainen, an energy engineering professor from Finland’s LUT University.

“So, because of the trade embargo with Russia, they are not able to make the high-quality valves needed in oil and gas processing. So maybe there are some valves broken and they can’t get them replaced.”

According to the World Bank, Russia is responsible for the highest volume of burning off gas of any fossil-fuel producing nation.

Flaring is considered far better for the environment than simply venting methane, which is the key ingredient in the gas and a major contributor to climate warming.

However, the flaring at Portovaya will also be producing “black carbon”, the sooty particles that are produced through the incomplete burning of fuels like natural gas.

“Of particular concern with flaring at Arctic latitudes is the transport of emitted black carbon northward where it deposits on snow and ice and significantly accelerates melting,” said Professor Matthew Johnson of Carleton University in Canada.

“Some highly cited estimates already put flaring as the dominant source of black carbon deposition in the Arctic and any increases in flaring in this region are especially unwelcome.”

Russia is the world’s second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and the world’s largest exporter of natural gas. Europe imports about 40 per cent of its gas and 30 per cent of its oil from Russia, a point keenly emphasised by some Russian officials.

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said last month: “The cold is coming soon. Nobody has cancelled winter, and alternative supplies of gas, oil, and coal are expensive or simply unrealistic.”

Germany’s ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, told Today on BBC Radio 4: “We have been observing these flares for quite a while. It shows that the measures we have taken so far — which means that we have reduced gas consumption from Russia over 50 per cent to now about 10 per cent — is having a strong effect on the Russian economy because they don’t have other places where they can sell their gas so they have to burn it.”