World Bank’s roadmap to stop flaring and curb methane emissions
At India Energy Week 2026, Zubin Bamji, Manager, Energy & Extractives Global Department at the World Bank, outlined decisive measures and ongoing progress to end routine flaring by 2030 in an exclusive studio interview with Energy Connects.
He notes that while flaring has not declined as quickly as many hope amid rising oil production, countries and companies committed to the goal are outperforming those without formal pledges. Bamji also highlights methane reduction as a critical, cost-effective opportunity, enabled by advanced detection technologies and swift on-site repairs, to pave the way to a lower-carbon future.
Could you talk to us about the progress towards zero routine flaring by 2030? Do you see a genuine decoupling of oil production from flaring?
We are seeing progress overall. However, over the last two or three years, as oil production has increased, we’ve seen that flaring hasn’t decreased by a similar amount, so decoupling between oil production and flaring is still occurring, but not at the rate we would like to see.
Encouragingly, the companies and governments committed to ending routine flaring by 2030 are performing better than those that have not. So, when you hear people talk about commitments that are not enforceable, the point is that they still have benefits and set a target for organisations and governments. We hope that more progress will be made over the next few years, as it is challenging given the growing middle class in many countries. Energy demand and oil production are both rising. Let’s see if we can make dramatic progress over the next few years in many countries.
One part of that progress is methane and methane emissions. Why is that a priority in your decarbonisation journey?
Methane is considered the proverbial low-hanging fruit because, as we have been learning through our programme at the World Bank, it is relatively easy to fix. With technological improvements in detecting methane over the last several years, we can quantify where these leaks are in the infrastructure and sometimes fix them right on the spot.
For example, we’re working with Pertamina, Indonesia’s national oil company. Recently, we completed work on one of their LNG facilities — BADAK LNG. From this one facility, we identified several dozen leaks. Out of those leaks, we worked with the company to fix about half of them right there on the spot.
If you quantify all of these fugitive methane emissions and the leaks in the infrastructure, globally, you’re talking about a lot of a natural resource being wasted at a time where energy security has become an issue for many countries — particularly in the European Union who are asking for and need more gas supplies to see this waste from leaks and intentional or unintentional flaring. This practice must now come to an end, and we’re hopeful that more operators around the world will see that preventing these leaks is not only about climate, but also the economic impact: the waste of a natural resource, while many countries would like to increase their energy supplies, as well as preventing economic waste.
We prepared an estimate for the East Asia region, working with the ASEAN Centre for Energy, and conducted research and analysis. There, we learned that approximately 80% of methane reduction projects across the entire region would be at net-negative cost, meaning they would generate profit. Operators and governments must recognise that this is an opportunity, not necessarily a case of spending a lot of resources and not getting anything in return, especially if you look at it in a programmatic, long-term way. This is what we hope to support in emerging economies. We hope to work with some operators to support their efforts to reduce methane and flaring.
How do you ensure monitoring improves across the industry and with the various governments you’re working with?
This is a good question, and it’s key to ensuring this is done in a programmatic, long-term manner, so you’re not just carrying out methane detection, fixing short-term issues, and then ignoring it later.
In some of these cases, we hope to develop this approach and provide grant funding to a government, operator, or national oil company, for example. This is free money provided through World Bank grants. We then expect that government to have a long-term approach, meaning as they start saving the resource, they keep the resource within their infrastructure, the pipelines, compressor stations, and see the economic returns from it. They need to reserve a portion of that enhanced revenue by not flaring or releasing methane into the atmosphere, to continuously monitor their facilities and infrastructure, and to fix those leaks on a long-term basis.
We hope to do this in many countries: we’re already doing this in a few Central Asian countries with whom we are partnering. They also see the value of ensuring that funds are used wisely to support a long-term programmatic approach, including monitoring, reporting, verification, and continuous implementation. It has to be operational excellence. It’s important that leadership at all these companies, as well as at the government level, recognise that this is a priority. This is one of the key missing components, along with the financing aspects of methane and flaring reduction. The other missing component in many contexts and situations is the notion of political prioritisation by the leadership, the ministry, and the government.
