Kurdistan Regional Government likely to miss flaring phase-out deadline, satellite data suggests

Eight hundred metres away from one of the largest oil wells in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Ali Hassan can’t sleep - the oil flares lighting up the sky outside his window keep him bed bound.

A nasty smell is spreading through Khabat, on the road to Mosul, as the flaring intensifies, and some residents are struggling to breathe.

“It gets inside the houses, even when you block the windows and doors,” Hassan said.*

His parents are coughing from the fumes. They were sleeping on the roof - as is common in the country during the summer - but the smoke from the flaring forces them back inside. With the electricity generator dying, they are often forced to sit in the dark, with the orange flames on the distant hills their only source of light.

The smoke coming from the oil refineries is spread by a process known as ‘flaring’, where oil wells burn the excess gas they can’t store or use.

We used satellite data to map incidents of flaring across Iraq, pinpointing which parts of the country were most at risk.

Using data collected from 2018, we identified Erbil and its surrounding villages - including fringe communities living in Kawergosk and Lalish, in Duhok province - as showing the highest incidents of flaring.

Russia burns the most amount of natural gas in the world, flaring off 24.88 billion cubic metres per year as of 2020 according to World Bank data, with Iraq following closely behind with 17.37 billion cubic metres.

But according to our analysis, Iraq's population on average lives much closer to flaring sites than Russia’s.

Since October 2018, we found that the number of people in Iraq living within a 1km radius of more than 10 flaring events was 1.19 million. In Russia, only 275,000 experienced the same level of exposure across the same time period.

Russia’s oil refineries are often in remote locations, spread out across arctic tundras. In Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, however, major cities and towns are more commonly situated close to the flares - leaving their populations at greater risk of exposure.

With residents suffering deteriorating health, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) issued oil and gas companies a directive to phase-out all flaring by 2023, giving them 18 months to comply. 

Our investigation used satellite data from 2018 onwards to measure the progress companies had made at the halfway mark, nine months after the government directed them to stop flaring. 

We tracked changes in real-time satellite imagery to gather the locations and times of hot pixel detections, to identify flaring hotspots from 2018 to April 2022. We calculated the level of flaring in the Kurdistan Region throughout the ‘phase out’ period.

Although the winter months showed a drop off in flaring activity, historical data reveals flaring levels have not decreased relative to previous years (2018-19).

As of May 2022, flaring levels have begun to creep back up again.

Our findings project that flaring will increase, not decrease, relative to 2021 - in violation of the commitment made by the KRG.

Questioned on the study, one official told Rudaw English that the government remained committed to the policy to end gas flaring by the start of 2023, and that Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani was personally encouraging of the policy, but could not say what consequences companies who continue flaring into the new year might face.

The Region’s flaring directive deadline, which would decrease the risk of respiratory illness and premature births, is fast approaching. Last month, the minister who issued the order, Kamal Atroshi, resigned from his role as Minister of Natural Resources; a role covered in the interim by the KRG’s Minister of Electricity Kamal Muhammad Salih.

Companies serious about phasing out flaring would need to implement infrastructure in order to capture the gas or sell it, reducing the amount they burn. The KRG’s Ministry of Natural Resources is tasked with monitoring the Region’s companies to reach this goal, but no data was immediately available to share with us.

Flaring is a convenient way to deal with the waste product known as associated petroleum gas.

The associated gas, if stored and processed, can be used to heat homes in the future - sold directly into the market - or used on site.

Much of the excess gas produced by oil rigs, such as those stationed far out at sea, for example, partially run on the gas they themselves produce - cutting out any need to burn it off.

But up-front investment in either storing the gas or additional pipelines to transport it is needed in all these cases. If the infrastructure doesn’t exist, like in oil facilities across the Region, the gas must be flared in order to maintain production levels.

According to some estimates, about 70 percent of Iraq’s natural gas is lost to flaring - in many cases burning off gas that could have been used during the winter, if it had been stored ahead of time.

The result of the flaring is high amounts of fine particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less (PM 2.5) in diameter, small enough to enter the lungs. The increase of PM 2.5 has been linked with respiratory diseases in the Region.

While satellites cannot measure PM 2.5 directly, they can identify aerosol optical depth (AOD) - which acts as a proxy indicating particulate matter around flaring sites.

Using AOD as a proxy, we found that all of the areas surrounding Erbil we measured were at least seven-times the limit of particulate matter recommended as safe by the World Health Organisation.

Asthma, allergies, lung fibrosis and stillbirths are all associated with flaring, but the communities who live near the flares are frightened most by the risk of cancer.

Several chemicals released through flaring, such as benzene, are named by the American Cancer Society as known carcinogens; substances that promote the formation of cancer.

Long-term exposure to benzene harms the bone marrow. Those exposed feel increasingly weak and tired as their red blood cell count decreases. Bruising and bleeding becomes more common, with healing taking longer.

Ivan, a local doctor working near Erbil who did not wish his second name to be reported, said he believes flaring to be the leading cause of respiratory illness in the Region.

His own sister is herself a patient, suffering from cancer he believes to be the result of living close to the flares. Many residents are forced to travel to Baghdad for expensive treatment, or further afield to Turkey or the Netherlands. In early June, staff at Sulaimani’s cancer hospital, in the east of the Kurdistan Region, warned of medicine shortages pushing patients to the brink. Most of the hospital's medical devices are broken and no money has been allocated for repairs.

Women living near natural gas and oil wells that burnt off excess gas through flaring are 50 percent more at risk of premature birth than women with no exposure, found researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, in partnership with UCLA scientists.

In a sample of children younger than 15 emitted to hospital in the Region, Global Pediatric Health found respiratory viruses to be almost twice as prevalent as in neighbouring Iran.

Kawergosk

Near Kawergosk, where over 8,000 Syrian refugees live - the majority of whom share an ethnic Kurdish identity, drawing from Qamishli, Jazeera, and Hasaka in the country’s northeast provinces - the Erbil oil refinery is operated by the KAR Group. According to UNHCR figures, 47.1 percent, almost half of the entire camp, are under 18 as of May 2022.

We come across one of the local schools, and children rush up to greet us. But before we can answer any of their questions, we’re rescued by another passerby: Ahmed Khalid.*

Khalid greets us with a smile, and immediately takes us to his home, a simple building with bare walls and doshaks (mattresses) on the floor.

Back in 2013 when the refugee camp was set up, it was all tents. For almost a decade the refugees of Kawergosk lived in rows of blue and white plastic, before being slowly replaced by cement blocks and cold stone. “When we first arrived, we didn’t even have a tent to sleep under,” said Khalid.
 
Now, the temporary accommodation has evolved into a small city, with residents running almost every kind of business out of their own homes and in shared spaces. Before the war, Khalid was a university student in Syria, but civil war broke out before he could finish.

We were introduced to the mother of his family, who works in the health sector. When Covid-19 hit, she vaccinated an estimated 5,000 children in one week. She told us that she was vaccinating babies between one and four days old.

When the work began, she started encountering more children with birth defects. Many are stillborn in the camps, but those who reached the age of vaccination would often have health defects; a missing valve, or with an atrial septal defect - a hole in the heart. Many had a condition which prevented them from crying, and many more had difficulty breathing as soon as they were born.

Rates of cancer and leukaemia had shot up in the camp, she recounted. A girl passed away from leukaemia at the age of 14 not long before we arrived. Another 12-year-old is currently suffering from breast cancer.

About 1,200 tonnes of ammunition were dropped on Iraq during the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, making it difficult to distinguish between cancer cases caused by flaring and those originating from the depleted uranium left by the bombing. 

But doctors operating in the Region, along with the residents themselves, said they believed flaring to be the leading cause of a recent rise in rates of cancer and leukaemia.

A study published earlier this year in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention (APJCP) found the total incidence of patients with cancer doubled between 2013 and 2019 in Erbil and Duhok, correlating with the increase in oil facilities becoming functional again after sustained conflict.

In Khalid's block alone, there have been seven cancer diagnoses in one month. She points to the air pollution as the cause - Kawergosk camp is near the gas flares, which litter the countryside on the way to the fenced-in community.

RELATED: Kurdistan Region faces challenges to end flaring

Lalish

Iraq’s minorities in the north are also bearing the brunt of the pollution. A community who frequently visit an area close to one of the flaring sites are the Yazidis, a minority group who mostly fled to the Region when the Islamic State (ISIS) launched a brutal genocide in their homeland of Shingal in August 2014.

When Yazidis pray, they face towards the sun, which shines out over their 4,000-year-old holy site of Lalish. But during routine maintenance, the sun is often obscured by smoke carried from the oil flares, sometimes engulfing entire villages.

“Our religion is our nature, and they are destroying our nature,” said Luqman Sulaiman, the Lalish head of media.

“For us as Yazidis, we don’t have another temple,” Sulaiman said, standing in Lalish with a lit flare visible from the holy site. “This is our only temple in all the world. We don’t have another place to go.”

The Yazidi religion has no prophet, and no holy text. In it, the god that created the world is absent from its internal affairs, leaving his dominion in the care of seven angels, the leader of which is called Malak Ṭāʾūs, or the Peacock Angel.

“They kill us because they say we do not worship God, but we came with the word God 500 years before them,” said Sulaiman. “We knew God before they did.”

Now, only around one million Yazidis remain, many aspiring to pilgrimage to Lalish, travelling from Armenia, Russia and Germany. It is the same site now being threatened by oil exploration.

Two oil fields surround Lalish, the Atrush oil field and the Shaikan oil field - with three separate oil and gas companies operating there, none of which responded to a request for comment.

When the oil companies need to clean out the machinery, a process which covers the valley in black smoke, sometimes engulfing whole settlements, they pay villagers $50 per day to leave their homes while the maintenance is ongoing. The cleaning happens every two or three months.

For simply living next to the flares, the villagers receive nothing. But many Yazidi villagers are employed as guards, receiving salaries of around $1,500 per month, around three-to-four times higher than what the locals could make elsewhere. Because of the job opportunities, many residents are hesitant to criticise the gas flaring, added Sulaiman. “In the end, Yazidis only get the smoke."

Kalak

Kalak is a small Kurdish settlement where the Great Zap River joins the Tigris by the road to Mosul. Around ten people drown in the river every year. The silt dug out of the river basin on a daily basis leaves a gaping chasm covered by the water - if swimmers aren’t careful, they’re sucked under.

“Ten more people died here last year,” said Hassan, gesturing at the sunken river. “The companies take the minerals from the riverbed and they don’t refill it. People try to swim in the same place and they drown because they don’t know it’s gotten deeper.”

Before entering Khabat, drivers are greeted by a large metal statue of a fish. The fish statue is a running joke among townsfolk, because it’s only a statue by accident. They never got the water to run, leaving the scaley metal dry.

“It’s a dead fish,” joked a traffic policeman, gesturing at the dry fountain we had parked next to. “It doesn’t have any water.”

The European Commission said climate change and growing human water use are causing these rivers and streams to dry up, with the banks of the Great Zap receding every year.

In the northern mountains of the Kurdistan Region, where the river originates, a vicious war between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is also destroying forestry and grassland, mounting further pressure on the environment.

Methane, the largest proponent of the associated gas burned off during the flaring, has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

The UN estimates that reducing methane by 45 percent within the decade could prevent 260,000 premature deaths, 775,000 asthma-related hospital visits, and 25 million tonnes of crop losses.

Turkey’s damming of the Tigris river on their side of the border has also contributed, leaving the river almost running dry. On a particularly hot day, when the water has receded, black patches of oil can be seen.

“When I swim here, I see dead fish floating in the oil,” said Hassan, standing atop the riverbank and pointing to the dry plains.

Beside him, dead eucalyptus trees lay barren in the sun, stripped of their greenery. Trucks and transport vehicles drive past, kicking up dust into the air.

Iraqi healthcare is poor, with hospitals constantly overwhelmed. It wasn’t until Covid hit the Region that they realised how bad the asthma rates had gotten, said Rebin Mohammed, a local environmentalist.*

“Cancer rates are going to increase in the future because of the flaring spots surrounding here,” said Mohammed. “The government is not forcing them to start giving back to the environment and the community.”

In more developed countries companies use filters to stop the smoke from reaching the towns or the villages. Here, there’s no pressure for the companies to protect the local inhabitants - making operational costs cheaper than in other parts of the world.

“All the damage it’s doing now is going to be five times more in 10-11 years after they surround us with oil fields,” said Mohammed.
 
“We will just vanish, and this place will disappear,” Mohammed said. “Our ancestors lived here, and we love this land so we have to stay here. We are sadly used to it.”

When interviewed, the local municipality official for Khabat - Rebaz Qasim Mirani - blamed the traffic on the nearby road for the pollution, dismissing the flaring as the leading cause.

“Each time it is a different excuse, the issue is bigger than him,” said Mohammed. “People are scared.”

Several health officials and doctors who had agreed to speak with us about respiratory problems from gas flaring dropped out last minute.

Asked if any progress had been made with phasing out flaring, he said: “It hasn’t changed at all. We know because we live here and we always see the same smoke every day.”

Gwer Road

The flaring around Gwer Road, the road connecting Erbil to Mosul and federal Iraq, is some of the most severe in Kurdistan. The KAR Group, a Kurdish engineering firm, is one of the many oil firms operating within the Region.

If the KRG were an independent country, the amount of oil and gas reserves would place it among the top 10 oil-rich countries in the world. But federal Iraq is seeking to bring the autonomous region, and its oil contracts, back under the control of its national company, the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO).

Questioned on the slow transition from gas flaring, one KRG official suggested that such “headaches” with Baghdad, and subsequent uncertainty, was in some part to blame.

Shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the KAR Group signed an agreement to expand a natural gas pipeline to Duhok for domestic production, later adding that the pipeline would be extended to Turkey.

Following Europe’s scramble for alternative energy suppliers, Prime Minister Barzani stated in March that Kurdish gas would ultimately be exported to Europe, speaking at the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Forum in Dubai.

The KRG stands by its commitment to phase out flaring by 2023, but so far companies are projected to have a similar output to last year or the year before.

Some progress

Yet there is hope for a future free of the smoke choking the Kurdistan Region.

Glasgow-headquartered energy firm Aggreko recently completed one of the largest flare gas-to-power projects in the Middle East.

The plant is located near the Sarqala field, Garmian block, southeast of the Region, and has cut flaring by a third.

“There is no technical justification for routine flaring left - and the economic and practical justifications are shrinking by the day,” Aggreko said.

While the plant represents only a fraction of the natural gas that is pumped into the air around Erbil every day, incremental changes are being made.

The project is proof not only that structural changes are possible but also that they are economically viable - the plant is able to sustain itself through using the gas it would otherwise have flared, reducing maintenance costs.

Although our research demonstrates the Region is not on target to phase out flaring by the end of 2022, the KRG has made some progress when compared with federal Iraq.

Rising gas prices - threatening economic shock in the rest of the world - could provide an incentive for oil and gas companies to provide infrastructure in the Region that stores the associated gas instead of flaring it.

But the cost in health has already been paid by many Iraqis. While future oil companies may be forced to adhere to the practice of curtailing gas flaring for economic reasons, the precedent of maintaining production levels at the expense of local residents has already been set.

The KRG has until 2023 to comply with its commitment to phase out flaring across the Region.

Sources:

•  Flaring count and locations: VIIRS Nightfire and Skytruth.org
•  Population density data: Google Earth Engine
•  AOD data used to derive PM2.5 concentrations: Google Earth Engine (2)

Tom Brown is a foreign affairs journalist published in UK nationals and international media, based in London. His background is in financial journalism, covering European financial markets, securitisation, restructuring and international law. He published his first novel with Austin Macauley in 2022.

Christina Last is a Fulbright scholar and postgraduate student at MIT, Boston. Her research focuses on using remote sensing and spatial data science to analyse the social world. Previously, she was a Research Data Scientist in the Research Engineering Group at the UK's Artificial Intelligence institute, where she specialised in improving open source machine learning research. She has led various international research projects, most recently as a Senior Data Scientist collaborating with UNICEF to model air quality during Covid-19 lockdowns using machine learning.

Stella Martany is a multilingual Assyrian Iraqi journalist and field producer based in Erbil. Stella’s storytelling journey started by reporting with foreign and international media in refugee and IDP camps, newly retaken areas and the frontline during the war against ISIS. With over six years’ experience in humanitarian project management with international NGOs, Stella is trained in trauma informed approaches to storytelling and news production. Stella is interested in documenting stories of human rights issues and violations, women, indigenous ethnic groups, religious and ethnic minorities, and refugees, and has produced and co-authored hundreds of stories with foreign media outlets across Iraq including The Telegraph and The Sunday Times.

*Not his real name