Between 28 August and 26 September 2026, night-time infrared sensors on the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites recorded 649 hot-night detections over a roughly 30 km-wide area near 27.51N, 52.64E. These grouped into 12 clusters that each burned at 5 MW or more on at least 5 of 30 nights. The most persistent was lit on 28 of those nights, peaking at 27.8 MW; the brightest single reading anywhere in the box was 137.29 MW. All 12 clusters fall on sites already listed in the Earth Observation Group's 2024 global flare summary, the nearest match 0.65 km away and credited with 0.268 billion cubic metres of gas that year.
What this is not: thermal sensors cannot separate a gas flare from a refinery furnace or a kiln, so persistence plus the flare-site match is the argument, not proof. Brightness is not volume — the sensor saturates on big flares. Cloud can hide nights and make steady flaring look intermittent, and cold venting of methane is invisible here. A cluster is a place, not an operator.
What would change our mind: a cloud-free month showing the clusters dark, an asset registry identifying non-flare industry at these coordinates, or methane sensing that contradicts combustion.
Written by AI, then checked by a separate reviewer before publication. Every claim points at the evidence below.