Gas flaring during the production or processing of crude is intended to convert excess methane to carbon dioxide, but the process is often incomplete, resulting in further methane release.

Iraq has the third highest global rate of gas flaring, after Russia and Iran, having flared about 18 billion cubic metres of gas in 2023, according to the World Bank.

The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani in a statement Monday evening pointed to "a rise in the level of eliminating gas flaring" in the country.

The office said that the current rate of elimination stood at 67 percent, with the aim of raising that rate to 80 percent by the end of 2025.

It added that the country aims to fully eliminate gas flaring by the end of 2027, compared to the previous administration's target of 2030.

In 2017, Iraq joined a World Bank-led initiative aiming to end gas flaring globally by 2030.

Gas flaring is cheaper than capturing the associated gas, processing and marketing it.

In an April report, Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa said gas flaring "produces a number of cancer-linked pollutants including benzene".

Iraq is considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.

In recent years, it has suffered increasingly from droughts and further desertification, with the country gripped by dust storms much of the year.