OREANDA-NEWS. December 3, 2009. The mission of WB-supported Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) at the head of Bakhtiyar Kerimov is visiting Baku currently.

The Baku-based WB resident office informs that the visit started yesterday and is due to last until 9 December.

“The mission will focus on discussion of co-operation with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) within the initiative, including discussion of SOCAR’s point of view,” the WB office said.

Earlier SOCAR’s vice president Mukhtar Babayev stated that SOCAR was a participant of the GGFR partnership.

“We’re interested in realization of this initiative as well as a company flaring gas,” he said then.

Azerbaijan launched partnership with GGFR in 2008.

A workgroup for Associated Gas Recovery Plan (AGRP) has been established under the Ministry of Industry & Energy. Its adoption is expected till the end of the year.

The Plan is being developed jointly with the Ministries of Ecology & Natural Resources and of Industry & Energy, and gas and electric energy operators.

It will be a single complex plan.

In its turn, the SOCAR has launched a program of low-pressure associated gas flaring since 2005. The Company managed to break away from statistics of the nineties when 5-10 million cu m of gas a day was burnt in flares. For the first 4 months of 2009 SOCAR succeeded to reduce associated gas flaring by 140,000 cu m a day at the expense of its utilization and supply to consumers.

Before the end of 2009 SOCAR is planning to cut gas flaring volume by 300,000 cu m.