SOCAR Production Unaffected by Severe Weather

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) has said that it its oil and gas production operations remain unaffected by recent severe weather conditions that have affected its peers.

Yesterday, news emerged that Russian gas giant Gazprom was struggling to keep up with gas demand as extreme cold and adverse weather conditions increased domestic demand, with supply amounts lessened to Italy and through the Yamal-Europe pipeline. 

Gazprom was forced to turn to its underground supplies yesterday in order to keep up with the increased demand.

"The company has engaged all of its gas transportation routes and significantly boosted supplies from its underground storage facilities in Europe to meet export requests," a statement from the company said.

Gazprom's customers were also relying on their own reserves in order to meet gas demand due to the unseasonably cold weather. RWE said it could rely on its own underground gas supplies in the Czech Republic, bouyed in volume by a mild winter, to ensure demand was met.

"Supplies of natural gas from Russia for use in the Czech Republic are currently somewhat lower," Martin Chalupsky, spokesman for the Czech unit of RWE said."This condition, however, doesn't present any problem for us or for customers of RWE. We will cover demand without any complications."

SOCAR said today that it is not facing the same difficulties and is proceeding with business as normal despite similarly severe weather.

"The weather conditions have not affected any production process of the company," the Trend news agency reports the company as saying.