Gas flaring waste revealed by satellite data.

The article reports that a massive 170 billion m³ of natural gas were burned worldwide in waste flares from oil fields in 2006. The practice is environmentally damaging in addition to being economically wasteful because it produces nearly 400 million tons of CO₂ per year. This amount is 13% of the 2012 target for greenhouse gas emission reduction that has been set by the Kyoto Protocol. This global survey of gas flaring was commissioned by World Bank's global gas flaring reduction partnership and was carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).