Flames so large and so bright that they can even be seen from space are currently a concern for Finland. North of the Russian metropolis of St. Petersburg, near the Finnish border, you can see Russia burning large quantities of gas. Quantities so large that one and a half million households could be supplied every day. For scientists, this is an environmental disaster.
The first signs that something was wrong came from Finnish citizens who saw a large fire on the horizon at the nearby border earlier this summer. Images of the border with Finland show flames so large that they can be seen from 40 kilometers away. We are talking about a liquefied gas terminal in Russia. As energy costs continue to rise in the EU, Russia has been burning massive amounts of gas for weeks instead of pouring it into the adjacent pipeline. This is the conclusion of experts from Rystad Energy, a world leader in gas industry analysis.
“$10 million in gas burned per day”
“The amount burned every day is between three and four million cubic meters,” senior vice president Sindre Knutsson explains in the Ö1 “Mittagsjournal.” This amount corresponds to the gas consumption of 1.6 million households in Europe. “$10 million worth of gas is burned per day, generating 9,000 tons of CO₂ per day,” Knutsson says.
Not far from the affected gas terminal, a pipeline starts at the compressor station in Portovaya, north of St. Petersburg – Nord Stream 1. The gas pipeline through the Baltic Sea supplies Russian gas directly to Germany, albeit in smaller and smaller quantities. At the moment this is only 20 percent of the capacity, from next Tuesday the pipeline will be completely shut down for maintenance work. Deliveries via the pipeline have been restricted since mid-July, with the Russians blaming technical difficulties for the containment.
Various reasons for combustion possible
It is not known whether in this case there is a technical necessity for the control or whether Russia is deliberately withholding the gas. Gazprom has not yet released a statement on the reasons for the destruction of these gas volumes. Experts consider several possible reasons: Russia’s gas storage facilities may be overcrowded, but it could also be a production surplus that Gazprom cannot or will not transport to Europe.
Whether the sanctions imposed by the EU are the cause of the burns can only be guessed at. Miguel Berger, Germany’s ambassador to the UK, told BBC News that European efforts to reduce dependence on Russian gas are “having a strong impact on the Russian economy”. “They have no other places to sell their gas, so they have to burn it,” he said.
Huge peak already seen in June
While gas flaring is common in processing plants — usually for technical or safety reasons — the magnitude of this combustion has astonished experts. “I’ve never seen an LNG plant blaze up so much gas,” said Jessica McCarty, a satellite data scientist at Miami University in Ohio. “We started seeing this huge spike around June, and it just hasn’t gone away.”
Mark Davis is the CEO of Capterio, a gas flaring solutions company. According to him, flaring is not a coincidence, but a conscious choice for operational reasons. “Operators are often reluctant to close factories for fear it could be technically difficult or expensive to get them back online, and that’s probably the case here,” he told BBC News.
Others believe that there could be technical difficulties in dealing with the large volumes of gas injected into the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
