Flare Management Program

Background

The Environmental Partnership and its members are committed to reducing flaring. The Flare Management Program formalizes longstanding participant discussions to expand our actions to meet The Environmental Partnership’s mission: driving industry solutions that are technically feasible and commercially viable, resulting in significant emissions reductions, including both methane and volatile organic compounds, across industry operations.

While U.S. operators have proven it’s possible to increase production while also reducing flaring, the participating companies share the community, shareholder, regulatory, and environmental perspective that flaring must be reduced.

Flaring typically occurs when there is a lack of gas gathering/processing capacity during facility or gathering maintenance or during unplanned events for safety measures such as alleviating pressure. Flaring is also used when an oil well produces ancillary natural gas and there is no pipeline infrastructure available to transport it. In these instances, flaring is the safer environmental option. Rather than venting the gas into the air, flaring burns the gas, which releases fewer greenhouse gases than venting.

Program Application

The Flare Management Program applies to domestic high pressure flaring of associated gas at onshore production, gathering and boosting oil field sites. The program also includes other combustion devices, for example, thermal oxidizers or combustors.

Program Specifics

Participating companies will advance best practices that reduce flare volumes, promote the beneficial use of associated gas, improve flare reliability and efficiency when flaring does occur, and collect valuable data to calculate flare intensity as the key metric to gauge progress from year to year.

Program Reporting and Content

The Environmental Partnership will report actions taken and aggregated data on an annual basis.