OREANDA-NEWS. July 30, 2010. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) has introduced a system to reduce emissions of volatile organic carbons (VOC) at its Black Sea Terminal (BST) in the Georgian port of Kulevi.

BST Ltd informs that the main environmental benefit of this project is to reduce the VOC emission from the storage tank to the atmosphere by more than 80%.

"First time this process was successfully operated at BST facility in the beginning of 2010. After inspection for detection of any vapor presence no hydrocarbon emission was observed,” the Company informed.

Gas Return system of the Terminal is designed to collect and recover light hydrocarbons from marine tankers while product loading is ongoing. Vapor generated in vessel tanks is routed back to the storage tanks where light hydrocarbons recover. The purpose of this process is to prevent appearance of flammable atmospheric vapor and gas on the tanker surface.