Flaring is the burning of Natural Gas at the oil well site.
It is not used to run an engine, heat a vessel or do any work.
It is just burned from a flare stack. It is just a vent that has be ignited.
If the gathering lines and other infrastructure was in place, they would move the gas to market.
But the individual gas production (at the oil well) is not cost economic to hold back the oil production to recover a little bit of gas.
To shut down the gas flow, you either have to shut down the oil well, or release the gas either in a flare or send it down a pipeline.
The only time we flare is if it’s H2s otherwise we just flow to the frack tanks and let it vent to the atmosphere. This is only done until we get the flowlines and meters in.