Glob­al gas flar­ing climbed to its high­est lev­el in five years in 2025, with pro­duc­ers burn­ing an es­ti­mat­ed 167 bil­lion cu­bic me­tres (bcm) of nat­ur­al gas, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank’s 2026 Glob­al Gas Flar­ing Track­er Re­port.

The re­port found that flar­ing in­creased by 6 per cent from a re­vised es­ti­mate of 157 bcm in 2024 to 167 bcm in 2025, mark­ing the third con­sec­u­tive an­nu­al rise. The in­crease re­versed progress made ear­li­er in the decade and high­lights the con­tin­ued chal­lenge of re­duc­ing rou­tine flar­ing, de­spite in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments and avail­able tech­nolo­gies.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Bank, the gas flared in 2025 had an es­ti­mat­ed mar­ket val­ue of US$54 bil­lion. If cap­tured in­stead of burned, it would have been enough to sup­ply the African con­ti­nent’s an­nu­al nat­ur­al gas de­mand or ex­ceed the vol­ume of LNG shipped an­nu­al­ly through the Strait of Hor­muz.

Gas flar­ing oc­curs when nat­ur­al gas pro­duced along­side crude oil is burned rather than cap­tured for com­mer­cial use. While some flar­ing is nec­es­sary dur­ing emer­gen­cies or for op­er­a­tional safe­ty, the World Bank not­ed that much of the gas flared glob­al­ly con­tin­ues to be burned rou­tine­ly be­cause of in­suf­fi­cient gas gath­er­ing in­fra­struc­ture, lim­it­ed pro­cess­ing ca­pac­i­ty, fi­nanc­ing chal­lenges and weak mar­ket in­cen­tives.

The re­port es­ti­mates that gas flar­ing re­leased ap­prox­i­mate­ly 429 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent in 2025, in­clud­ing around 50 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide equiv­a­lent from un­burned methane due to in­com­plete com­bus­tion. These emis­sions con­tribute to cli­mate change while al­so rep­re­sent­ing a loss of en­er­gy that could oth­er­wise sup­port elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion, in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment or ex­ports.

The re­port al­so found that flar­ing re­mains high­ly con­cen­trat­ed. Nine coun­tries ac­count­ed for more than 80 per cent of glob­al gas flar­ing in 2025 while pro­duc­ing less than half of the world’s crude oil. Rus­sia, Iran and Iraq re­mained among the largest con­trib­u­tors, un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of tar­get­ed ac­tion in a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

While flar­ing in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly in most of the largest flar­ing coun­tries since 2021, Venezuela was an ex­cep­tion, record­ing low­er flar­ing vol­umes than in 2021. De­spite this im­prove­ment, the re­port found that Venezuela con­tin­ues to have the world’s high­est flar­ing in­ten­si­ty, mean­ing it flares more gas per bar­rel of oil pro­duced than any oth­er coun­try. The find­ings sug­gest there re­mains con­sid­er­able po­ten­tial to cap­ture and com­mer­cialise as­so­ci­at­ed gas that is cur­rent­ly be­ing flared.

For T&T, the find­ings are par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant giv­en its ex­ist­ing nat­ur­al gas in­fra­struc­ture and prox­im­i­ty to Venezuela’s off­shore gas re­source. Cap­tur­ing as­so­ci­at­ed gas that is cur­rent­ly be­ing flared in east­ern Venezuela could sup­port fu­ture re­gion­al gas de­vel­op­ment if com­mer­cial and cross-bor­der arrange­ments al­low these re­sources to be brought to mar­ket. While the re­port does not as­sess in­di­vid­ual projects, it high­lights the broad­er eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty of re­duc­ing flar­ing through in­vest­ment in gas gath­er­ing and trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture.

Al­though glob­al oil pro­duc­tion in­creased by on­ly about one per cent in 2025, flar­ing vol­umes rose much faster. The World Bank said this in­di­cates that the in­crease was dri­ven less by high­er pro­duc­tion and more by weak­er flar­ing per­for­mance in sev­er­al ma­jor oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries.

The World Bank es­ti­mates that elim­i­nat­ing rou­tine flar­ing world­wide would re­quire be­tween US$70 bil­lion and US$100 bil­lion in in­vest­ment. Al­though sig­nif­i­cant, the re­port notes that the cost is on­ly mod­est­ly high­er than the es­ti­mat­ed US$54 bil­lion val­ue of the gas cur­rent­ly be­ing wast­ed each year. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, in­vest­ments in gas gath­er­ing sys­tems, pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties and trans­porta­tion in­fra­struc­ture would al­low more as­so­ci­at­ed gas to be brought to mar­ket in­stead of be­ing burned. Cap­tur­ing and com­mer­cial­is­ing this gas would im­prove re­source ef­fi­cien­cy while cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­plies for do­mes­tic pow­er gen­er­a­tion, in­dus­tri­al use and ex­port mar­kets.

The World Bank al­so high­light­ed the role of satel­lite mon­i­tor­ing in im­prov­ing trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. The an­nu­al re­port us­es ob­ser­va­tions from the Vis­i­ble In­frared Imag­ing Ra­diome­ter Suite (VI­IRS) to es­ti­mate flar­ing ac­tiv­i­ty glob­al­ly, pro­vid­ing an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of trends across oil-pro­duc­ing re­gions.

The find­ings come as gov­ern­ments and en­er­gy com­pa­nies con­tin­ue work­ing to­ward the World Bank-led Ze­ro Rou­tine Flar­ing by 2030 ini­tia­tive, which has been en­dorsed by more than 100 gov­ern­ments and or­gan­i­sa­tions. The re­port notes that ex­ist­ing tech­nolo­gies are al­ready ca­pa­ble of sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing rou­tine flar­ing, pro­vid­ed there is sus­tained in­vest­ment, sup­port­ive reg­u­la­tion and com­mer­cial in­cen­tives to bring as­so­ci­at­ed gas to mar­ket.

T&T has al­so tak­en steps to re­duce gas flar­ing as part of broad­er ef­forts to im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and low­er emis­sions in the en­er­gy sec­tor. The coun­try is a par­tic­i­pat­ing gov­ern­ment in the World Bank’s Glob­al Flar­ing and Methane Re­duc­tion Part­ner­ship (GFMR), which sup­ports the adop­tion of poli­cies and tech­nolo­gies aimed at re­duc­ing rou­tine flar­ing and methane emis­sions.

While the over­all trend moved in the wrong di­rec­tion in 2025, the World Bank said re­duc­ing rou­tine flar­ing re­mains one of the fastest op­por­tu­ni­ties for the oil and gas in­dus­try to im­prove en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, low­er emis­sions and make bet­ter use of ex­ist­ing nat­ur­al gas re­sources.