A Stabroek News article on June 7, 2020 stated inter alia that “This newspaper had last month reported that glitches during production startup saw flaring of over 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas; a figure subsequently confirmed by the EPA to be over 9 billion cubic feet, as ExxonMobil (XOM) assured that it would have from that week begin transitioning to using the gas for well injection purposes”.
To put this in perspective, one needs to first equate the energy wasted by flaring the associated gases to a standard oil measurement; Barrel of Oil Equivalent (BOE).
One barrel of crude oil generally has approximately the same energy content as 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas, so this quantity of natural gas is “equivalent” to one barrel of oil.
This means that the 9 billion cubic feet of gas that was flared is equivalent to 9,000,000,000 divided by 6,000 = 1,500,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE).
One could argue that GPL does not have the capability to use natural gas at this time, however, if the natural gas was available for free or at a very competitive price, the investment in new power plants capable of burning natural gas would be very easy to justify and finance.
