I visited an oil field in West Texas last month. Walked out to the wellsite at dawn. The first thing I noticed wasn't the drilling rig. It was the flare stack. A giant metal tower with a bright flame burning at the top, 24 hours a day, in what looked like controlled fire.
I asked the site supervisor what was burning. He said, "That's associated gas. It comes up with the oil. We don't have a pipeline, so we burn it off." Then he pointed to the diesel generator running at full capacity right next to the flare, powering the site operations.
He watched my face and just nodded. He already knew it made no sense.
The scale of waste is incomprehensible
In 2024, global oil and gas operations flared 151 billion cubic meters of associated gas. That's not leakage. That's not accident. That's intentional burning because there's no economic way to capture or transport it.
Associated gas is what comes up with the oil. In places where there's no pipeline network, no processing infrastructure, or no market to sell it to, operators burn it. They literally light it on fire and let it burn day and night. It's legal in most places. It's accepted practice in the industry. And it's staggering in scale.
To put 151 billion cubic meters in perspective, that's enough natural gas to heat a million American homes for a year. It's energy that's been created by geological processes over millions of years, brought to the surface by expensive drilling operations, and then burned with zero economic return.
And we're powering the site with diesel
Here's what really got me. The wellsite needs electricity. For pumping equipment, compressors, instrumentation, lighting, everything. So they run a diesel generator on site. Large diesel generator. Burning expensive fuel, creating emissions, making noise, requiring fuel deliveries, needing maintenance.
Meanwhile, the gas that's rising out of the ground is literally being burned in the flare stack fifty feet away.
The math is obvious to anyone who looks at it. You've got free fuel coming out of the ground. You've got power demand on site. You've got equipment that can turn one into the other. But the infrastructure and economics aren't set up to connect them. So both operate independently, wasting money and energy.
The oil is profitable. The gas is waste. The solution sits right on the wellsite, undeployed.
The ROI calculation is brutal for operators
I worked through the numbers with several operators. The lifecycle cost analysis is compelling. A wellsite that's running diesel generators to power its operations could run those same generators on captured stranded gas. The gas is free. It's already there. The only cost is capturing it and routing it to the generator.
Most mid-size wellsites operate continuously. That's thousands of hours per year of generator runtime. At current diesel prices, you're looking at significant annual fuel costs. If you could offset that with gas that's currently being flared, the math works fast.
Our illustrative model indicates that a suitable site could generate substantial lifecycle savings by displacing diesel with conditioned associated gas. The result depends on gas composition, utilization, diesel price, equipment cost, permitting, and operating profile.
But here's where it gets complicated. Capturing and processing associated gas requires equipment investment. It requires environmental permits. It requires infrastructure. Most small and mid-size operators don't have the capital or expertise to build that infrastructure. So they keep burning the gas and buying diesel.
Stranded gas deployment is the answer
Forward-thinking operators are starting to think about this differently. Instead of running diesel generators to power the site, they're deploying equipment that can run directly on the gas that's being flared. They capture the gas stream, condition it slightly if needed, and feed it into an on-site power unit that's designed to run on natural gas, propane, or biogas.
The unit runs continuously on fuel that's free and abundant on site. The diesel deliveries stop. The environmental impact flips from negative to positive. And the financial case becomes obvious.
The best units can handle variable gas composition because not all associated gas is pure methane. Some of it has heavier hydrocarbons, some has sulfur compounds. The equipment needs to work reliably and handle variations in composition. It needs to start and stop safely. It needs to handle the pressure variations that come from real-world wellsite conditions.
This is why we built Immedia Power
The grid has traditionally determined where and when businesses can grow. Immedia Power changes that. We combine our unique power-generation system with Power OS, our embedded AI layer, to create the DOR, a new distributed power platform that gives space-constrained sites the on-site power they need to run and scale without waiting on the grid.
The DOR (Distributed On-demand Resource) is being designed for applications including stranded-gas-to-power. It targets 200 kW continuous output and multi-fuel operation. Associated gas cannot be assumed suitable without testing; gas treatment, emissions and safety review, permitting, and site integration may be required.
The package targets a 15-square-foot footprint, a 700-kilogram system weight, and 69 dBA at five meters. Deployment timing, utility coordination, gas conditioning, interconnection, environmental review, and site work depend on the approved configuration. Power OS is designed for remote monitoring and control.
Economics and emissions depend on gas composition, treatment, utilization, local diesel prices, permitting, equipment cost, and operating profile. Any customer case must be modeled and validated for the specific site.
The DOR is designed for applications such as converting stranded gas into on-site electricity. First pilot deployments are planned for 2027, subject to validation, certification, and site requirements. If your wellsite is flaring gas while running diesel, get in touch to discuss a potential pilot.