Twenty-five major oil companies, oil-producing nations and development institutions agreed Friday to end the practice of routine flaring of natural gas by 2030 at thousands of oil production sites around the world. Royal Dutch Shell , Statoil , Kuwait Oil Co., Russia, Norway and the Asian Development Bank are among those making the commitment, which was announced by the World Bank and United Nations at an event in Washington Friday. No U.S.-based companies have signed onto the initiative. Many producers regularly burn off natural gas as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when producing oil for a variety of reasons, including lack of infrastructure to move the gas and low economic incentive to use the gas. Andrei Lushin, World Bank Group Executive Director for Russia, said in […]