Why Does the Gas Industry Still Burn Its Own Product? Mikhail Zubkov on the Engineering Behind Cleaner Production
Mikhail ZubkovA petroleum engineer and co-inventor of a patented gas condensate treatment method and laureate of an industry award for energy conservation, explains where production facilities lose fuel and money.
In June 2026, the World Bank released its annual Global Gas Flaring Tracker, and the findings were blunt: producers burned off 167 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2025, the third yearly increase in a row, destroying some $54 billion worth of fuel. Yet every flare stack stands at a real facility, and before the burning stops, an engineer has to redesign the equipment around it. Mikhail Zubkov has spent a decade on that side of the problem. A petroleum engineer and co-inventor of a patented gas condensate treatment method, he now serves in an operational leadership role at the receiving terminal of an international offshore gas transmission system, following years of work reducing flare volumes and energy losses at gas production facilities. His projects answer the question the report leaves open: what does eliminating waste look like at a single facility?
Gas that burns for nothing
The hardest part is changing production systems that are already running,
Flaring persists because some gas has nowhere to go. Part of the stream at oil and condensate sites, known as low-pressure flash gas or associated gas, surfaces outside the main process and ends up at the flare.
Zubkov met the problem early. He entered the industry in 2015 by winning an open competition for young specialists at one of the world’s largest gas producers, rose from operator to operations lead at gas and oil production facilities, and from 2020 to 2024 worked there as a lead engineer of the production department. There he developed and implemented modifications to the condensate degassing and low-pressure gas recovery system between process units, increasing the capacity of the equalizing and ejector manifolds, which cut gas sent to the flare, an economic effect of more than $300,000 in annual value from recovered gas.
“Efficiency in energy is rarely a single clever fix,” Zubkov says. “It comes from a systematic approach that weighs energy consumption and reliability together with the environmental consequences and long-term economics of every decision.”
Losses hidden in routine operations
Flaring is the visible waste. The quieter kind hides in everyday operations. By removing excessive hydraulic resistance from a gas-condensate transfer system, Zubkov reduced pump power demand, increased system capacity and generated approximately $46,000 in annual energy savings. Another project dealt with gas condensate, the light liquid hydrocarbons that surface along with gas. Zubkov co-authored a patented treatment method: modernized equipment raised the efficiency of the units separating condensate from water.
Cold climates add losses of their own. Zubkov reworked the design of an emergency shutdown valve, so it stayed reliable at minus 45 degrees Celsius, which reduced well downtime and saved about $260,000 a year. Reliability, in his experience, belongs to the same discipline: an idle well wastes energy just as surely as a flare does. This work brought Zubkov industry recognition: in 2022, the 14th All-Russian Conference of Young Scientists and Specialists “New Technologies in the Gas Industry (Gas, Oil, Energy)” named him a laureate in its Energy Conservation and Ecology section for a paper on cutting the energy intensity of gas condensate pumping systems.
From individual fixes to system-scale impact
Savings achieved through individual equipment modifications become more significant when applied across large, continuously operating production systems. Zubkov’s experience spans gas and gas-condensate facilities with a combined processing capacity exceeding 30 billion cubic meters per year, where even modest improvements in energy efficiency, reliability and hydrocarbon recovery can produce substantial operational and economic results. His work has included production optimization, facility modernization, commissioning support and the implementation of technical solutions at operating assets. Since 2024, he has brought this experience to an international setting, supporting the operator of an offshore gas transmission system. In parallel with his professional responsibilities, he completed a master’s degree in oil and gas engineering in 2025
“The hardest part is changing production systems that are already running,” Zubkov says. “Different stakeholders have different priorities, and someone has to align them. That is where project management, risk control and a properly structured Management of Change process become as important as the engineering itself. ESG goals only become real when environmental benefits, operational reliability, process safety and economics are considered together and translated into measurable results.”
Zubkov is a Chartered Engineer and a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, one of the world’s longest-established professional engineering institutions with more than 150 years of history.
The World Bank estimates that ending routine flaring worldwide would cost $70 billion to $100 billion, a large bill until it is set against $54 billion lost in a single year. The report’s authors point to leadership and governance as the missing ingredients. Careers like Zubkov’s spell out what that work means in practice: a redesigned valve here, a percentage shaved off pump consumption there, repeated across thousands of facilities until the flares go dark.
Carlos is an engineer with strong expertise in technical and industrial topics. He previously worked at international companies such as Siemens and is multilingual.
