A single facility in Russia is burning off gas worth an estimated £8.4m a day - fuel that would previously been exported to Germany - it has been claimed.
As Europe's energy costs soar, analysis shared with the BBC claims a liquified natural gas (LNG) plant at Portovaya, around 160 miles north-west of St Petersburg, is burning 4.34 million cubic metres of gas daily, prompting fears that the large volumes of carbon dioxide and soot it is creating could exacerbate the melting of Arctic ice.
BBC News reports that analysis by Rystad Energy says the first signs that something was awry came from Finnish citizens over the border who spotted a large flame on the horizon earlier this summer. Portovaya is located close to a compressor station at the start of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline which carries gas under the sea to Germany, but supplies through the pipeline have been curtailed since mid-July. Russia blames technical issues but Germany says it is purely a political move following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
