why on earth would they use ‘flaring’ ? that always seemed to me a huge waste.
No market, or means to get the gas to a buyer. If you want to produce the oil you bring gas with it.
From my personal experience in irq, circa 2003, with US Army Corps of engineers task force Restore Iraqi Oil, most Iraqi crude contains both natural gas and hydrogen sulfide gases, making it very corrosive on hardware and difficult to separate, so burning it was the easy solution...