The World Bank's Global Flaring and Methane Reduction Partnership (GFMR), formerly the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership (GGFR), is a multi-donor trust fund composed of governments, oil companies, and multilateral organizations committed to ending routine gas at oil production sites across the world and reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector to near zero by 2030.
GFMR focuses on providing grant funding, technical assistance, policy and regulatory reform advisory services, institutional strengthening, and mobilizing financing to support action by governments and operators, thereby jump-starting the deployment of flaring and methane reduction solutions.
Gas Flaring
During oil production, the associated natural gas is often flared (burned) or even sometime vented when economic, regulatory or technical barriers to the development of gas markets and gas infrastructure prevent it from being used or when re-injecting the associated gas back into the reservoir is not possible.
GFMR estimates that global upstream gas flaring increased to 148 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2023 from 139 bcm in 2022. Last year, the world still flared enough gas to generate approximately 1,800 Terawatt hours (TWh) of energy, almost two-thirds of the European Union's net domestic electricity generation.
Gas flaring contributes to climate change and impacts the environment through the emission of carbon dioxide, methane, black carbon, and other pollutants. It is estimated that each cubic meter of associated gas flared results in about 2.8 kilograms of CO2-equivalent emissions (CO2e). At current levels, global flaring is estimated to result in over 350 million tons of CO2equivalent emissions annually.
Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative (ZRF)
GFMR advocates for ending routine gas flaring and venting by garnering commitments for the Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative (ZRF). Governments and companies that endorse ZRF commit to no routine flaring in any new oil field developments and to end routine flaring at existing (legacy) oil production sites as soon as possible and no later than 2030. Venting is never an acceptable substitute for flaring.
Methane
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential up to 80 times greater than carbon dioxide. The rapid reduction of methane emissions is one of the most important short-term climate actions, as it only remains in the atmosphere for around a decade.
Deploying the full potential of methane reduction solutions in the oil and gas sector could avoid roughly 0.1 degrees C of warming by mid-century—equivalent to zeroing out the emissions of every car and truck in the world. Oil and gas operations contribute nearly a fifth of global methane emissions from human activity. About half of these emissions occur in developing countries.
Methane mitigation, however, only receives a fraction of climate finance. The GFMR Partnership is designed to support those countries with the least capacity and resources to address emissions while also leveraging billions of private sector finance.
