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Record W4414373819 · doi:10.1021/acs.est.5c03755

Analysis of Flaring Activity at Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Export Facilities Worldwide

2025· article· en· W4414373819 on OpenAlexafffund
Laura Minet, Forood Azargoshasbi, Meredith Franklin, Gunnar W. Schade, Margaret J. McGregor, Tim K. Takaro

Bibliographic record

VenueEnvironmental Science & Technology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEnergy
TopicOil, Gas, and Environmental Issues
Canadian institutionsSimon Fraser UniversityWorld Federation of Science JournalistsUniversity of TorontoSquamish NationUniversity of British ColumbiaMinistry of the Environment, Conservation and ParksUniversity of Victoria
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsLiquefied natural gasNatural gasGreenhouse gasVolume (thermodynamics)Fugitive emissionsEnergy sourceVisible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities are booming worldwide to supply gas for the growing energy demand. Flaring, the controlled burning of natural gas, occurs at these facilities during operations ranging from start-up to ongoing maintenance and under emergency situations. Although flaring can be a significant air pollutant and greenhouse gas emission source, little information exists on the frequency, duration, and volume of gas flared by LNG export facilities. This study leveraged ten years of data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Night Fire (VNF) product associated with 48 existing LNG export facilities globally to develop probabilities of flaring at different life-cycle stages. We found a significantly higher volume of gas flared in the first two years of a facility's operation (i.e., on average 1.9 (1.0-3.2) billion cubic meters (bcm) per capacity vs 0.62 (0.43-0.92) bcm during subsequent years). During regular operations, the annual volume of gas flared was correlated with the facility's production capacity, and flaring varied greatly among facilities (148 (137-159) flaring days/year on average and 0.73 (0.64-0.85) bcm/capacity). Unfortunately, most environmental assessments overlook the start-up phase and fail to consider worst-case scenarios. As flaring is a source of air pollution, its potential health impacts on local populations may be underestimated in these assessments.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.002
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.013
Threshold uncertainty score0.026

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.002
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.001
Bibliometrics0.0030.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.222
Teacher spread0.216 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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