OREANDA-NEWS. July 31, 2008. According to the The Environment State Program (ESP) instituted by Presidential Decree No. 1697 of September 28, 2006 The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic performs wide-ranging ecological projects. One of these projects is the Absheron Rehabilitation Program, Large Scale Oil Polluted Land Cleanup Joint Project with World Bank. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic had performed the relevant work within mentioned project.

Foremost, the feasibility of the project was prepared and agreed with World Bank. At the same time, an information dissemination activity in a form of round table was conducted, in order to inform the public, including the representatives of media and non-government organizations, about the project.

In accordance with World Bank project implementation procedure State Oil Company of Azerbaijan has established the Project Management Team. During the consecutive meetings with the representatives of the World Bank held at the beginning of this year the project components keys were defined. Furthermore the list of clean-up equipments for the land remediation, including its auxiliary parts was put in place (1 stationary and 6 semi-mobile, with total production power 1500 m3/hour).

The documents regarding the project agreement, loan agreement and project appraisal document were presented by World Bank representatives during their visit to Baku and these were accordingly reviewed, commented, discussed and agreed upon by the Project Management Team members of the SOCAR. Subsequent to comments and amendments approved by Project Management Team members, the agreed Minutes of Negotiations was signed by SOCAR president Mr. Rovnag Abdullayev. In compliance with this Minutes of Negotiations, the total project cost is USD 184.0 million (VAT is included), out of which USD 60.0 million will be financed with the loan from World Bank.

The Environmental policy of SOCAR was prepared by a consulting company, which was selected to do this work within the Request for quotation. The document has been placed on SOCAR web page. It is planned to take into account the opinion and proposals of World Bank during the implementation of the mentioned document.

In addition, the procurement rules defined by World Bank was agreed upon and the procurement of the technical consultancy services for the Procurement of Plant and Equipment for the Remediation of Oil-polluted Land was conducted based on request for Request for quotation.

Currently, the invitation letter for the prequalification was placed on SOCAR web page. At the same time, the relevant measures are being undertaken for the completion of the project related Operation Manual.