ODID's Joerg Friedrichs has co-written an article on gas flaring for website resilience.org.

Global gas flaring – the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction processes – remains stubbornly high. In the article, written with Zoheir Ebrahim, the authors examine the determinants of gas flaring in three prominent cases: Russia and Nigeria as the two largest emitters of flare gas, and the United States as a rapidly expanding newcomer to the club.

They find that, despite differences in the three cases, the underlying cause is always the same: an oversupply of associated gas in a place or at a time where the demand for gas is too low and commercialisation is too difficult.

The authors relate this to what Friedrichs and Oliver Inderwildi of the Smith School have called the "carbon curse" - in which fuel abundance can confine countries to carbon-intensive developmental pathways with problematic consequences.

Read the full article.