Azerbaijan, Baku, Apr. 2 / Trend /
Azerbaijan may increase the volume of gas pumped into underground storage facilities to 3 billion cubic meters compared to 2 billion in 2009, an oil and gas industry source told Trend .
"The country is taking efforts to increase the active gas storage capacity of its underground facilities. Roughly one billion cubic meters of the gas volume pumped in 2009 remains in storage," the source said.
The country will pump gas into underground storage facilities for use in autumn and winter from April 15 until Oct. 15.
The State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) is drilling two wells at the Kalmaz underground gas storage project to expand the facility's capacity.
These operations are conducted under plans to increase the active volumes of storage reserves from 1.2 billion to 2.4 billion cubic meters.
Azerbaijan has two underground storage facilities - Garadagh and Kalmaz.
SOCAR pumped a record volume of gas into underground storage facilities in 2009 - roughly 2 billion cubic meters compared to 1.4 billion in 2008. Roughly 1.16 billion cubic meters were pumped into Kalmaz and 795.3 million into Garadagh.