Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR fully supports a World Bank (WB) initiative to end the practice of routine gas flaring at oil production sites.

This statement was made by a company spokesman on August 20, commenting on the WB’s proposal to establish a single standard for oil and gas companies around the globe on the issue of gas flaring.

The national energy company has joined the World Bank’s “Zero Routine Flaring by 2030” initiative in line with global oil giants and was the fifth company to sign this initiative.

“SOCAR is one of the first to join the WB’s and United Nation’s initiative, to the campaign combining forces to end routine gas flaring by 2030. We have achieved sufficient successes in this sphere. SOCAR is working and will continue to maintain a great job in this direction. Therefore, we fully support the WB’s initiative, which will reduce environmental pollution,” SOCAR’s representative said.

The WB hopes to persuade all major oil-producing countries and companies to join the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

So far, the initiative has been endorsed by Russia, Kazakhstan, Norway, Cameroon, Gabon, Uzbekistan, Congo, Angola, and France, as well as nine oil companies including Total, Statoil, Eni, SNH – Cameroon, Petroamazonas EP (Ecuador), Shell, SNPC, Kuwait Oil Company and BG Group, and six development institutions – The World Bank African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and United Nations Sustainable Energy for All.

The endorsers collectively account for more than 40 percent of all global gas flaring.

By endorsing the initiative, governments, oil companies and development institutions recognize that routine gas flaring is unsustainable from a resource management and environmental perspective and agree to cooperate to eliminate ongoing routine flaring as soon as possible and no later than 2030.

"The growing global oil & gas industry has also brought to the global agenda the mitigation of negative effects to environment and climate change as well as environmental protection,” said SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev. “Azerbaijan, as an oil producing country, has undertaken bold actions and achieved significant results during the past several years.”

Through joining the World Bank-led Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, SOCAR has achieved a decrease in the ratio of flared gas to 1.7% in 2013 and 1.6% in 2014 accordingly, SOCAR President stressed.

“The captured flare gas was channeled into the transportation network to be delivered to end consumers. This fact highlights once again the importance that Azerbaijan pays to environmental protection and mitigation of climate change risks."

Every year, around 140 billion cubic meters of natural gas produced together with oil is wastefully burned or “flared” at thousands of oil fields around the world, according to the WB. This results in more than 300 million tons of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere—equivalent to emissions from approximately 77 million cars.

If this amount of associated gas were used for power generation, it could provide more electricity than the entire African continent consumes per day. But currently, gas is flared for a variety of technical, regulatory, and economic reasons, or because its use is not given high priority.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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