That's the way natural gas (methane) works - and why 'flaring it off' makes ecological sense if there's no practicable was to get it to market or to store it. It's a waste product of shale oil here in North America; at nighttime some of the 'flaring off' is visible from the ISS w/o magnification.

Upside: those pipelines were already shut down when the damage occurred, so it's a limited amount of methane. Downside: that's still quite a lot.

I guess nobody's willing to go light it.