Alberta has quietly removed its regulatory ceiling on natural gas flaring and the climate-busting methane emissions that result, after the industry exceeded those limits over the last two consecutive years, Reuters reports.

The news landed on the same day that analysts said the province's oil sands production would rise 5% this year, to a record 3.5 million barrels per day, CBC writes.

Last week, the Alberta Energy Regulator told Reuters it had lifted the gas flaring limit on instructions from the provincial government. AER data indicate that Alberta "flared approximately 912.7 million cubic metres of natural gas in 2024, exceeding the annual provincial limit of 670 million cubic metres by 36%," the news agency writes. "The province had exceeded the limit in 2023, with regulatory data showing total annual flare volumes of 753 million cubic metres that year."

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Non-emergency flaring and venting "occur when oil field operators opt to burn the 'associated' gas that accompanies oil production, or simply release it to the atmosphere, rather than to build the equipment and pipelines to capture it," the International Energy Agency explains. "Flaring results in the release of substantial volumes of potent GHGs, including methane, black soot, and nitrous oxide."

Methane carries about 84 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over the crucial 20-year span in which humanity will be scrambling to get climate change under control. The World Bank estimates that eliminating flaring would prevent the equivalent of at least 381 million tonnes of carbon dioxide pollution per year, Reuters says.

A spokesperson for Environment Minister Rebecca Shulz, said "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," Reuters says. "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."

Meanwhile, analysts at S&P Global Commodity Insights say Canada's oil sands production is on the rise, not because any new projects have come online, but due to smaller plant expansions and process improvements, CBC reports.

"The increased trajectory for Canadian oil sands production growth amidst a period of oil price volatility reflects producers' continued emphasis on optimization-and the favourable economics that underpin such operations," the firm's chief Canadian oil analyst, Kevin Birn, in a statement. "This large resource base provides ample room for producers to find debottlenecking opportunities, decrease downtime, and increase throughput."

In March, Environment and Climate Change Canada's latest emissions inventory report found that climate pollution from oil sands production increased 143% between 2005 and 2023. At the time, veteran energy analyst P.J. Partington spotlighted the "tremendous variation in emissions trends" across the various elements of the Canadian fossil industry: While oil and gas emissions rose 7% across the board between 2005 and 2023, "the oil sands are in a league of their own."

Fast forward two months, and "we can't lose sight of the fact that greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sands are also hitting record levels because the consequences are all around us in the climate change-fuelled wildfires, heat waves, and extreme weather that are disrupting lives and the economy," Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart told CBC. "This is why the federal government needs to implement its long-promised cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector."

Source: The Energy Mix