Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 19
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) continues building a new gas storage facility in Azerbaijan, SOCAR head Rovnag Abdullayev told reporters Sept. 19.
Abdullayev said that SOCAR has not renounced its intentions to build the Tumbul gas storage facility in Nakhchivan.
"SOCAR has recently drilled the third well here," he said. "These wells will be flushed out soon. In general, the work is underway."
The appraisal wells on the basis of the Nehram salt deposit are being drilled at the Tumbul section.
At present, Azerbaijan ensures swap supplies to Iran to provide the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with gas. A decision was made to build an underground gas storage facility on the basis of the salt deposit to ensure stability of gas supplies to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
An underground gas storage facility with a storage capacity of 200-300 million cubic meters will be sufficient to meet the needs of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic in gas.
The depth of the salt deposit here is 52 meters, while it is considered to be appropriate to build an underground gas storage facility even at the deposit thickness of 40 meters, according to the preliminary data.
Azerbaijan has two underground gas storage facilities - Kalmaz and Garadagh. Both gas storage facilities are on the balance of SOCAR.
Currently, the active gas volumes in the country's underground gas storage facilities account for more than 1.82 billion cubic meters.
The Azerbaijani underground gas storage facilities can store up to 6 billion cubic meters of gas.
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