“They no longer know who to sell it to”

Burn the gas of the Russia. Since June 17, the flames have been rising from the company’s Portovaya compressor station Gazprom, on the border with Finland. The photos come from the coast of Virolahti, which is right next to the Russian eastern border, and were circulated by the local newspaper Yle. But confirmation also comes from satellite images from NASA’s fire monitoring system.

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Russia burns gas, possible reasons

Careless or planned act? Since May, Putin has closed the gas taps in Helsinki. Like the Baltic countries, Poland and Bulgaria, Finland refused to pay for gas in rubles. The flames that have been immortalized in Russian gas stations could indicate difficulties in storing the extracted gas. According to Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko, such trials show that Western sanctions continue to bind the Russians. “Instead of earning billions of euros from supplies, the Russians are forced to simply burn the extracted gas in the air. Blackmailers are already feeling the damage and the length of time they can still dictate their terms is rapidly diminishing“he wrote on Facebook and added that the West must maintain the sanctions regime and strengthen it even more.

The phenomenon of flaring

There could also be another reason behind the fires. It is likely that the flames were caused by the combustion of natural gas at the compressor station. This is flaring: the controlled and deliberate destruction of burning gas by combustion. But there are doubts in this case. According to satellite images from NASA, no fire was detected in the Gazprom compressor station area near the Finnish border on the coast of the Gulf of Finland prior to this period.

🇷🇺 “Gazprom” has been flaring gas instead of supplying it to the EU countries near the Portovaya compressor station and a single named LNG thermal power plant since June, according to the Finnish media Yle pic.twitter.com/3LTukJcP0M

– Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) August 4, 2022

When is flaring used?

“If, for example, a malfunction occurs in an LNG terminal or a biogas plant, it may be necessary to resort to flaring, for example, to keep the pressure in the gas tank constant,” explains Olga Väisänen, director of communications and the responsibility of the energy company Gasum. In short, flaring is used in case of problems. But this does not seem to be the case.