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Azerbaijan's gas reservoirs reached almost 3.43 billion cubic meters, a source at Azerbaijan's energy giant SOCAR said.

There are 2 underground gas storage facilities, Kalmaz and Garadagh, in Azerbaijan.

"The process of gas pumping still continues and the gas volume in the underground storage facilities is expected to exceed 3.5 billion cubic meters by the end of the season," the source told Trend news agency.

Of the total gas volume in the country's storage facilities, Garadagh and Kalmaz facilities account for 1.88 billion and about 1.55 billion cubic meters respectively, he said.

Over 1.95 billion cubic meters of gas have been pumped into storage facilities since the beginning of the season, about 1.1 billion cubic meters of which are stored in Garadagh, and about 856.3 million cubic meters are stored in Kalmaz.

At the end of the season, the residual gas volume in the country's underground storage facilities exceeded 1.47 billion cubic meters, about 780 million cubic meters of which are stored in Garadagh and 697.03 million cubic meters in Kalmaz.

The country's underground reservoirs allow for the storage of nearly 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas.

At the end of last pumping season, the volume of stored gas in underground facilities reached almost 3.3 billion cubic meters, compared to about 3.25 billion cubic meters at the end of the previous season.

About 2.11 billion cubic meters of gas were pumped into storage facilities last year.

SOCAR has also started drilling a second appraisal well as part of building an underground gas storage facility in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.

Drilling appraisal wells on the basis of Nehram deposit is being carried out at the Tumbul site.

The source said that drilling the first exploration well has been completed and the depth of the well exceeded 1200 meters.

The panned depth of the second well is 1,000 meters.

"Some 170 meters of the planned 1,000 meters have been drilled so far," the source said.

According to him, the results of the appraisal drilling will be presented once drilling the three wells at the site is over.

Previously it was decided to increase the planned depth of the first appraisal well from 1,000 to 1,250 meters in order to study salt deposits in more details.

Azerbaijan is currently carrying out swap deliveries of gas to Iran in order to provide the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic with gas.

The underground gas storage facilities with a capacity of 200-300 million cubic meters will be enough for meeting the needs of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.