The volume of gas flared on Statoil's Statfjord A platform has been cut by about 25,000 cubic metres per day during the summer
Some 50,000 cubic metres of daily gas is now being burnt off on the North Sea field, compared with 75,000 earlier.
This yields a substantial environmental gain in terms of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, while the group also saves NOK 20,000 per day in carbon tax.
The need to handle a steadily expanding water cut in the wellstreams has prompted the flaring cut-back, reports production supervisor Arve Thingnes on Statfjord A.
Work focused on removing a bottleneck in the last stage of the water separation process, where liberated gas used to be flared.
Efforts were made to pressure the tank during last year's turnaround, but this allowed more water to pass through. The volume of liberated gas increased, and the production technicians decided it was possible to recover this resource.
Modifications made in this year's turnaround mean that gas separated from the produced water is now returned to the process for export or injection back into the reservoir.
The NOK 2 million invested in the project will be recovered before the end of the year, says Mr Thingnes.
"We'll also get a production gain from this, since it allows us to handle more produced water."
He adds that the water cut on Statfjord is increasingly dramatically as oil production declines.
The A platform currently produces some 52,500 barrels of oil and 219,000 barrels of water per day, compared with 344,000 barrels of oil and almost no water when the installation was on plateau during the mid-eighties.