Field Notes · Flare maths
How much power is in a flare?
A whiteboard estimate of the electricity hiding in flared gas: one million standard cubic feet a day is roughly 4 to 5 MW from a gas engine.
A flare burns gas that has nowhere to go. Before deciding what to do with it, it helps to know what it is worth. The arithmetic fits on a whiteboard.
The calculation
Power is gas rate, times energy content, times conversion efficiency.
- Gas rate. Take one million standard cubic feet a day. That is roughly a third of a cubic metre every second.
- Energy content. At roughly 35 megajoules per cubic metre, typical of lean gas, that stream carries about 11 to 12 MW of heat. Rich associated gas carries more.
- Efficiency. A gas engine turns about 40% of that into electricity.
So one million standard cubic feet a day is worth about 4 to 5 MW of electricity, and much of the remaining energy leaves as heat that can be recovered.
The scale
In 2025 the world flared 167 billion cubic metres of gas. Flaring rose for the third year in a row, and the volume nearly matches Africa's annual gas use (World Bank, Global Gas Flaring Tracker 2026).
What this means for a field
Small or remote volumes are often flared because they are too small to justify a pipeline. The estimate above is the first screen for a different answer: put power generation at the flare, in modular blocks of 5 to 50 MW, and use the electricity on site or nearby.
Figures are indicative screening values; a project uses measured gas rates, composition and site conditions.
Follow Field Notes on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Questions about a field or a project: talk to us.