Fig. 1.17 shows the burning of gas on an offshore platform in a flare system. A flare system is an important piece of infrastructure in oil and gas plants. Flaring is a safety system designed to burn excess hydrocarbon gasses that are not worth selling. Flare systems reduce the risk of explosions by releasing the excess pressure generated by the flared gas. In theory, more than 99% of the gas is burned during flaring. However, flaringmay be less efficient in practice for a variety of reasons, such as low heat and flame input and instability. Thus, the unburned natural gases can release substantial amounts of methane and other harmful gases into the environment. There are various reasons to decide to flare gas, such as: