Azerbaijan, Baku, July 19 / Trend E.Ismayilov /
As of July18, the gas volume in the Azerbaijani underground gas storage facilities hit 2.19 billion cubic meters, a source in the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) said. SOCAR own these facilities.
The volumes include gas pumped into the current season and the remaining from 2010. It is assumed that gas reserves in the storage facilities will hit 3.5 billion cubic meters by late 2011, or nearly 0.5 billion more than in 2010.
Azerbaijan has two underground storage facilities - Garadagh and Kalmaz.
The source said more than 1 billion cubic meters of gas was pumped into the underground storage facilities from the beginning of the season. The storage facilities had more than 1.1 billion cubic meters of gas from the last season.
"Today, 16.75 million cubic meters of gas is daily pumped to both underground gas storage facilities," the source noted.
The process of pumping gas into the underground storage facilities started in May , 2011. In early May, the daily pumping volume was about 2 million cubic meters.
The volume of gas reserves in the underground storage facilities amounted to 3.05 billion cubic meters in 2010-2011. Of the total amount of more than 1.13 billion cubic meters was left from the previous year.