Azerbaijan to Double Storage Capacity
Azerbaijan state oil and gas producer Socar's CEO Rovnag Abdullayev has said that the capacity of the country's underground gas storage (UGS) has been increased to 3.5bn m3. This is now projected to be almost doubled to reach 6bn m3 by 2019 at an estimated cost of $50mn-$60mn.
To this end, it is planned to drill 25 new wells for gas injection in the Garadagh UGS as a whole, and 21 wells for Galmaz. In addition, the construction of a new compressor station with a working pressure of 250 bar is planned. This year alone Socar plans to drill a total of 7 new wells for gas injection.
The storage expansion is intended to manage supply at peak demand season, as both the Absheron field's phase one comes onstream at 1.5bn m3/yr in 2019 and as the Umid field's production capacity triples to 1bn m3/yr, both being intended for Azerbaijan's domestic consumption.
Socar also said that current stocks in the country's UGS are 1.33bn m3. It noted that gas injections into Garadagh and Galmaz storage facilities for the winter of 2017-2018 began this April with about 547mn m3 pumped in as of June 1 2017: 255.5m m3 into Garadagh and the rest into Galmaz. The latter is 75 km south-east of Baku and started operating in 1955. Garadagh is 25 km south-east of Baku and was launched in 1954.
Meanwhile, the EU said June 9 that the commission's vice president for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic will be among visitors to Kazakhstan's World Universal Exhibition EXPO 2017 'Future Energy' in Astana on 10-12 June, during which he will hold meetings with Kazakh Prime Minister Sagintayev and Kazakh Energy Minister Bozumbayev and also a series of meetings with energy Ministers of other countries.
Azerbaijan Desk