Flare and off-gas recovery: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Flare gas is often stranded far from pipelines, so recovery pays only where it can be compressed, piped, used on site or turned into LNG, CNG or power. Gas prices, oil output and flaring penalties set the economics.
No public price Flare and off-gas recovery has no public monthly price series: Value depends on local gas prices and flaring rules; no index.What its price moves with
Recovered gas is sold or used as natural gas, so gas prices set its value. Where prices are high, recovery pays; where gas is stranded and cheap, it is still often flared. This activity has no price series, so no statistics are shown.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Most flared gas comes out of the ground with oil. When oil prices rise, drilling and associated gas rise too, which increases the amount that must be handled or flared.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Associated gas contains propane and butane, which can be separated and sold as LPG. These liquids are often worth more than the dry gas, making recovery profitable even far from pipelines.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Small-scale LNG units can liquefy recovered gas for trucking or shipping, turning stranded gas into a saleable product. LNG prices, often linked to oil, therefore affect which flare projects are viable.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Gas engines and gensets burn recovered gas to power oilfield equipment, replacing diesel. This is often the simplest use, so engine cost and diesel prices shape the economics. Rules against routine flaring are pushing more operators to adopt it.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Refinery purge and off-gas streams contain hydrogen that can be recovered with membranes or pressure swing units rather than burned. Reusing it cuts the need to make new hydrogen from gas.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.