Russia will stop the practice of gas flaring, in which unwanted gas is burned as it is released from oilfields, acting deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said on Wednesday.
"We will not allow anyone to flare gas, at least in Russia. The decision has already been taken," Ivanov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
"We are not yet rich enough to allow ourselves such a luxury, and that is even before we mention the environment," Ivanov, who is widely tipped to replace President Vladimir Putin in March 2008, told a military-industrial energy committee.
He described the practice as "vandalism and waste."
The World Bank has named Russia as one of the main practitioners of gas flaring.
The Bank says flaring worldwide releases about 390 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere per year.
The Siberian region of Khanty-Mansiisk, the biggest oil producing region in Russia, alone flares between 7.3 to 7.6 billion cubic metres of gas a year, its governor Alexander Filippenko told the meeting.
