"Flared Shores: Egypt’s unregulated flaring along the mediterranean shoreline"

About 3,5 billions of cubic metres worth of methane have been flared on the Egyptian side of the Mediterranean Sea and shores between 2012 and 2022 ... Despite being an endorser of the Zero Flaring Routine initiative launched in 2015 by the World Bank, Egypt continues to exhibit flaring signals over sensitive coastlines including not only in several residential districts in Alexandria, but also on Ashtum El Gamel, a protected area.

Flaring is the act of converting methane into compounds such as carbon dioxide... its health-related and environmental impacts leave a very consistent mark...

Ashtum El Gamel, a protected wetland reserve and Egypt’s most important bird area, faces a vast industrial complex made of hundreds of gas pipes, dozens of processing units, and a few burning torches where methane emissions have more than doubled in the past ten years, according to an analysis made possible by Skytruth, a nonprofit environmental watchdog... 

While transport and tourism have been identified as some of the main threats for biodiversity in the Mediterranean region ... methane flares on the North African shores of this regional basin appear to be widely unreported. 

Methane emissions are considered the world’s second source of greenhouse gases after carbon dioxide...

Thanks to satellite imagery analysis, it is now possible to monitor such industry-related flaring activity on a daily basis...

Wadi Al-Qamar’s residential buildings are cornered by industrial zones. Cement and coal processing units, as well as gas and petroleum sites, are a daily burden that everyone seems to be aware of, but flaring feels like a lesser concern...

A 2019 study led by Rice University has established that flaring can be connected to premature deaths...

“Residents are also affected by gas,” shares a former city council member who wishes to remain anonymous, “but they are not aware of it.” She also adds that these two districts are well known for their well-documented shares of asthma and chest allergies. Despite being rather visually discrete compared to cement factories, gas flaring units have been proven to have a public health impact up to a radius of at least 60 miles.

Skytruth has also identified these flaring sources to be attributable to various refineries...

Nefarious effects of flaring go beyond human health hazards: it also impacts soil, vegetation, and water sources.

Asked about the current legislation over flaring in protected areas, once again, both the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Petroleum declined to comment...

...a legal and regulatory framework is yet to be developed. To this day, the word “flaring” is not found in any official policy: “Flaring is not used in any textbooks,” comments the governmental source.

“Egypt successfully reduced flaring” in 2022 according to a joint report produced by the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership and the World Bank in 2023 ... A separate study from 2022 produced by the same organisations showed that out of all ZRF countries, Egypt was the poorest ranked one in terms of regulatory frameworks on flaring.

The World Bank did get back... stating that “comparing regulations across countries is complex as regulations that work in one country’s context may not work equally well in another.” ... they do not acknowledge that Egypt actually does not have any specific regulation on the flaring.