Azerbaijan to pass Associated Gas Recovery Plan till end of 2009

The event organizers are State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR), and World Bank.

Addressing to the conference WB operations officer Bakhtiyar Kerimov claimed that Azerbaijan launched partnership with GGFR in 2008.

“A workgroup for Associated Gas Recovery Plan (AGRP) has been established under the Ministry of Industry & Energy. Its adoption is expected till the end of the year,” Kerimov said.

SOCAR vice president for ecological affairs Mukhtar Babayev said that the Plan was being developed jointly with the Ministries of Ecology & Natural Resources and of Industry & Energy, and gas and electric energy operators.

“It will be a single complex plan. Today’s conference that has gathered 120 participants will allow us to make a single action plan. In its turn, SOCAR has been realizing a program of low-pressure associated gas flaring since 2005.  We managed to break away from statistics of the nineties when 5-10 million cu m of gas a day was burned in flares. For the last 4 months of 2009 SOCAR succeeded to reduce associated gas flaring by 140,000 cu m a day at the expense of its utilization and supply to consumers,” Babayev said.

WB country manager Gregory Jedrzejczak also noted of existence of AGRP components and the conference will allow specifying them.

/Azerbaijan Business Center/