Satellite night passes picked up a steady point of heat about where the Hoveyzeh flare field sits in Khuzestan, Iran — but at a location with no registered flare site within 2 km in the 2023 or 2024 annual flare summaries. The cluster was lit on 27 of the last 30 nights, peaking at 27.6 MW, one of 4 persistent clusters detected in the area (3 of which match known registry sites). A later pass on 27 September saw the heat again, at 23.99 MW, confirming it is still burning.
What this is not: thermal sensors see heat, not its cause. A furnace, refinery unit, kiln or other industrial heat source looks much the same from orbit. "New" only means absent from the annual registry — a flare too small or too often cloud-covered for that product would also show up as new. Heat is also not volume; the brightness figure is a single-pixel estimate, not gas burned. Cold venting and unlit methane are invisible here.
What would change our mind: a ground or high-resolution image showing a stack or furnace, an entry for this point in the next annual flare summary, or the heat stopping on clear nights.
Written by AI, then checked by a separate reviewer before publication. Every claim points at the evidence below.