Socar to Bid to Build Storage in Georgia

Azerbaijan's oil company Socar has expressed interest in building underground storage (UGS) in Georgia and has bid in response to a tender, its Georgian subsdiary director Mahir Mamedov told NGW July 25. Its success or failure should be known in the autumn, he said.

Georgia launched an open international tender for the construction of its first UGS July 14 to boost its energy security. The tender was held by Georgia Oil & Gas Corp. 

GOGC announced that it was looking to secure engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning (Epic) services for the building of a storage facility at the depleted Samgori South Dome oil field near the capital, Tbilisi.

According to France’s Geostock, Samgora will have a capacity of 210-280mn m³ of gas, or 10%-15% of Georgia’s annual gas intake. The work includes two exploration wells that will evaluate the project’s scope, along with the completion of four monitoring wells. GOGC is also tendering the installation of a gas treatment and compression station at the site, along with power supply equipment and oil, water and gas pipeline systems. Construction has to start in early 2018 with the aim of completing the facility by 2021.

The country mostly relies on imports from Azerbaijan to meet its gas needs and state-run company Socar is a major gas operator in the country.

However, from time to time Georgia has been forced to secure Russian gas. During the first two months of this year, it bought 100mn m³ of gas from Russia to cover a shortfall in supplies from Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan desk