Measuring Gas Flaring in Russia with Multispectral VIIRS Nightfire

Payne Institute Earth Observation Group Researcher Mikhail Zhizhin, Alexey Matveev, Researcher Tilottama Ghosh, Researcher Feng‐Chi Hsu, Martyn Howells, and Senior Researcher Christopher Elvidge write about the data reported by the international and governmental agencies, the Russian Federation remains one of the world’s major associated petroleum gas (APG) flaring nations. In the past decade, numerous studies have shown the applicability of satellite-based methods to estimate gas flaring. New satellite-based observations might offer an insight in region-, company-, and site-specific gas flaring patterns, as the reported data are often incomplete. We provide a detailed catalog of the upstream and downstream gas flares and an in-depth analysis at the country, region, company and site level of the satellite monitoring results of flaring in Russia from 2012 to 2020.  August 5, 2021.