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This study seeks to address pertinent economic and environmental issues associated with natural gas flaring, especially for the world's leading natural gas flaring economies (i.e. Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria). By applying relevant empirical panel and country-specific approaches, the study found that fuel energy export positively impacts economic growth with elasticity of ~ 0.22 to ~ 0.24 for the panel examination. It is further revealed that environmental quality in the panel is hampered by increase in economic growth, gas flaring, fuel energy export, and urbanization. Moreover, for the country-wise inference, government quality desirably moderates economic and environmental aspects of gas flaring in Venezuela and Nigeria, and in Russia and Iran respectively. However, government quality moderates gas flaring to cause economic downturn in the USA. Additionally, economic growth increased with increase in urbanisation (in Iraq and the USA), gas flaring (in Iran and the USA), government quality (only in the USA), and fuel energy export (only in Algeria) while economic growth downturn is due to increase urbanisation in Russia and the USA, increase in fuel energy export in the USA, and increase in government quality in Russia. Meanwhile, environmental quality is worsened through intense carbon dioxide emission from increased urbanisation activity (in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria), increased fuel energy export (in Nigeria), increased natural gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria), increased GDP (in Russia, Iran, USA, Algeria, and Venezuela), and high government quality (in Iran). Interestingly, the result revealed that increase in GDP (in Nigeria), increase in urbanisation (in the USA), and increase in gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria) dampens environmental quality. Importantly, this study offers policy insight into sustainable approaches in natural gas production, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the relationships between environmental quality, economic growth, and energy use. A panel data set of 25 years (1990–2014) for five OPEC countries (Algeria, Nigeria, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) is used, and panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, panel Granger causality tests, fully modified ordinary Least square (FMOLS), and dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) methods are employed as estimation strategies. Our results show that in the long-run, there are two-way causal relationships between GDP and energy consumption for all countries. Bidirectional causal relationships between GDP and CO2 emissions are also observed in all countries except Algeria. The same relationships are also observed between energy consumption and CO2 emissions in all countries with an exception in Venezuela where unidirectional causality running from CO2 to energy consumption is found. The impact of GDP on the CO2 emissions is the highest in Saudi Arabia followed by Venezuela, Nigeria, and Indonesia. The effect of energy use on the CO2 emissions is the greatest in Algeria followed by Indonesia and Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]