Energy producers in Alberta, Canada’s top oil-producing province, blew past the province’s self-imposed limit on annual natural gas flaring in 2024 for a second year in a row, Reuters calculations show.
Late last week, Alberta’s energy regulator said it was ending the limit on flaring. Reuters is the first to report the change, which the regulator quietly published in a bulletin on its website.
On Monday, the regulator confirmed the removal of the limit and said it was responding to direction from the provincial government.
Oil production is booming in Canada, the world’s No. 4 producer, which has been trying to diversify exports away from the U.S. since President Donald Trump took office and began imposing tariffs on many Canadian exports.
Canadian energy companies hope Prime Minister Mark Carney will be more accommodating to the industry than his predecessor Justin Trudeau.
For the first time ever, Alberta’s oil and gas sector breached the limit for how much natural gas it is legally allowed to burn off through flaring. Andrew Chang breaks down what flaring is, why oil companies do it and the environmental impact.
A tally by Reuters of Alberta Energy Regulator data shows oil and gas producers in the province flared approximately 912.7 million cubic metres of natural gas in 2024, exceeding the annual provincial limit of 670 million cubic metres by 36 per cent.
The province had exceeded the limit in 2023, with regulatory data showing total annual flare volumes of 753 million cubic metres that year.
Flaring limit no longer enforced
Flaring is the practice of burning off the excess natural gas associated with oil production. If the volumes of gas byproduct are small, and there are no pipelines nearby to transport the gas, companies often choose for economic reasons to dispose of it through flaring instead of capturing it and storing it.
Eliminating the practice would cut at least 381 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in environmentally harmful emissions released into the atmosphere, the World Bank has said.
Ryan Fournier, spokesperson for Alberta’s Environment Minister Rebecca Shulz, said in an email that the province launched a review of its flare gas policy after the oil and gas industry exceeded the limit for the first time in 2023.
He said the province determined the 20-year-old flaring limit no longer served as an effective policy for reducing flaring and the ceiling did not account for increased oil production in the province or new emissions-reduction strategies.
The federal energy and environment ministries did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Alberta’s crude oil production set an all-time record in 2024 at 1.5 billion barrels, a 4.5 per cent increase over 2023.
A 2022 report by the Alberta Energy Regulator showed flaring volumes in the province have been increasing since 2016.
Flaring increasing worldwide
A 2024 report by the World Bank, which has been advocating for a global end to the practice of routine flaring by 2030, found that flaring by oil and gas companies worldwide rose seven per cent in 2023 even as crude oil production rose only one per cent over the same time.
While flaring is better for the environment than some other methods of gas disposal such as venting, it still releases a variety of byproducts and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as well as black soot which can be harmful to human health, said Amanda Bryant, senior oil and gas analyst for the clean energy think-tank the Pembina Institute.
She said companies have alternatives available to them, such as investing in equipment that can be used to capture flare gases at site and redirect them back into production for use as fuel.
“Getting rid of the rule doesn’t get rid of the problem,” Bryant said in an interview. “The role of a regulator really needs to be to prevent harmful impacts of industry and to ensure that our resources are developed responsibly.”
