Global gas flaring hits six-year high as Russia and Iran drive surge

Global gas flaring climbed to 167 billion cubic metres in 2025, its highest level since 2019 and the third straight annual increase. Russia and Iran drove much of the surge, while the World Bank estimated that the burned gas represented about $54 billion in wasted fuel.

The scale is concentrated in a small group of producers. Russia, Iran and Iraq together accounted for about 84 bcm, nearly half of the global total, and the top nine flaring countries, Russia, Iran, Iraq, the United States, Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria, Libya and Mexico, were responsible for more than four-fifths of the world’s flaring while producing nearly half of its oil. The Bank also said 2025 flaring was nearly equal to Africa’s entire annual gas consumption and exceeded the annual LNG volumes transiting the Persian Gulf.

That waste carries a climate cost as well as an economic one. The World Bank said flaring in 2024 produced 389 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, including 46 million tonnes from unburnt methane. It also said flaring intensity has remained largely unchanged for the last fifteen years, a sign that oil production has not become materially cleaner even where output has expanded.

The Bank’s message is blunt: the technology to cut flaring already exists. What continues to block progress, it says, is weak infrastructure, limited domestic gas markets, financing constraints and uneven enforcement that keep companies from investing in capture and processing systems. Demetrios Papathanasiou, the Bank’s energy director, said the economic development costs of continued flaring are too high. The Bank’s Global Flaring and Methane Reduction partnership said the gas could instead power homes and industries, generate jobs, reduce import bills and extend electricity access and clean cooking fuels.

The failure is especially visible in Africa, where domestic power shortages make the waste harder to justify. The Bank highlighted persistent flaring in Libya, Algeria and Nigeria, and Nigeria’s upstream regulator, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, said its metered data showed about 6.08 bcm flared in 2025, slightly below the Bank’s estimate. The broader warning is that the world is still not aligning oil production with climate goals or energy security, even as more than half a billion people remain without reliable electricity.

The World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative, launched in 2015, aims to end routine flaring by the end of the decade. The International Energy Agency says 35 governments endorsed that effort in April 2015, representing about 60% of total global gas flaring. Yet the latest numbers show the same bottleneck remains: the political will to enforce, finance and build the systems that would keep valuable gas from being burned off into the sky.