Iran's gas flaring has doubled in ten years
Gas burned off at oil and gas sites, billion cubic metres, the nine top flaring countries, 2015 vs 2025.
- 1. Heat that bleaches coral reached 84% of the world's reefs
- 2. Swiss glaciers lost over 5% of their ice in 2026
- 3. Canada's 2023 fires burned more than twice the old record
- 4. Tropical forests lost a record 6.7 million hectares in 2024
- 5. Drought cut Panama Canal transits by a fifth in 2024
- 6. China adds more forest each year than any other country
- 7. Kyoto's cherry blossoms now peak earliest in 1,200 years
- 8. Brazil's Amazon lost the least forest on record
- 9. Three in four Bangkok residents now live on a floodplain
- 10. Indonesia now emits more CO2 from energy than Germany
- 11. Iran's gas flaring has doubled in ten years
Iran flared 29.9 billion cubic metres of gas in 2025, up from 14.4 billion in 2015.
Iran rose from fourth to second among the world's gas flarers, just behind Russia's 30.3 billion.
Iran's share of all the gas flared in the world in 2025: fuel burned at oil and gas sites instead of reaching homes and power plants.
the numbers & method
| Gas flared (bcm) | 2015 (bcm) | |
|---|---|---|
| Russia | 30.3 | 17.1 |
| Iran | 29.9 | 14.4 |
| Iraq | 24.1 | 27.7 |
| Venezuela | 13.5 | 18.6 |
| Mexico | 9.7 | 5.8 |
| Libya | 9.7 | 3.1 |
| Algeria | 8.9 | 12.0 |
| Nigeria | 6.6 | 7.2 |
| United States | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Claim types Estimate · Interpretation
World Bank Global Flaring and Methane Reduction Partnership (GFMR, formerly GGFR), file Flare-volume-and-intensity-estimates-2012-2025.xlsx (June 2026 edition), flare volume by economy, billion cubic metres; satellite estimates from NOAA VIIRS (Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines), upstream oil and gas and LNG sites. Read from the progrss vault, which loads the World Bank file itself. Iran: 2015 14.43, 2020 16.05, 2023 26.01, 2024 28.51, 2025 29.93 (highest in the 2012–2025 series). Russia 2025 30.28; Iraq 2015 27.68, 2025 24.12; Mexico 2015 5.79, 2025 9.72; Libya 2015 3.09, 2025 9.71. The nine countries charted are the World Bank's top nine for 2025 (83% of world flaring). World 2025 166.6 (sum of 104 economies; the Tracker reports 167). Derived by progrss: 29.93 ÷ 14.43 = 2.07×; share 29.93 ÷ 166.6 = 18.0%; ranks among economies in the file (2015: Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, Iran; 2025: Russia, Iran, Iraq). The June 2026 method revised the whole series: never compare with older World Bank reports. The second clause of takeaway 3 is an interpretation. Licence: World Bank Data Catalog entry CC BY 4.0; the 2026 file states none (commercial use unconfirmed).
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