Up in smoke: characterizing the population exposed to flaring from unconventional oil and gas development in the contiguous US

Due to advances in unconventional extraction techniques, the rate of fossil fuel production in the United States (US) is higher than ever before. The disposal of waste gas via intentional combustion (flaring) from unconventional oil and gas (UOG) development has also been on the rise, and may expose nearby residents to toxic air pollutants, light pollution and noise. However, little data exists on the extent of flaring in the US or the number of people living near UOG flaring activity. Utilizing nightly sattelite observations of flaring from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite Nightfire product, 2010 Census data and a dataset of remotely sensed building footprints, we applied a dasymetric mapping approach to estimate the number of nightly flare events across all oil shale plays in the contiguous US between March 2012 and February 2020 and characterize the populations residing within 3 km, 5 km and 10 km of UOG flares in terms of age, race and ethnicity. We found that three basins accounted for over 83% of all UOG flaring activity in the contiguous US over the 8 year study period. We estimated that over half a million people in these basins reside within 5 km of a flare, and 39% of them lived near more than 100 nightly flares. Black, indigenous, and people of color were disproportionately exposed to flaring.