ZERO EMISSIONS

The US Federal Court of New Orleans (in the state of Louisiana) has come to the end of the four-year-long story of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, after declaring that the accident happened as a result of BP's blatant negligence and that the company bears the main responsibility for it. The Court's decision means that BP is threatened with further fines. We will remind you that the explosion on the oil rig led to the death of 11 people, and another two going missing. The borehole ripped open by the explosion was only concreted up 152 days after the accident. Before the borehole was sealed, approximately five million barrels of oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico.

No matter how much the fairness of the court's decision on this case is disputed, unfortunately that will not help to bring back the dead or to restore the environmental balance in the region which has been destroyed, for many years to come… For the oil companies the main lesson to be learned is that safety standards obviously need to be tightened up in this field when extracting hydrocarbons from the depths of the Earth. It has to be acknowledged that the BP company, which is the operator of major projects in oil and gas extraction, has always paid a great deal of attention to the possible impact on the environment. A senior specialist from BP-Azerbaijan's Department of the Environment, Amrita de Souza, said at the "Caspian Shelf" conference that the company had been monitoring the environment by making 116 checks in 2004-2014.

"Monitoring is not only carried out on the rigs, but also along the pipelines, at the Sangachal terminal, and this helps us to determine the extent to which all stages of the work comply with the environmental safety requirements and to assess the impact on the environment and the manner in which it is developing. So, we can react to any possible malfunctions more quickly," A. de Souza noted. He said that 92 environmental monitoring checks had been conducted at sea, 38 on dry land and 24 in the off-shore zone. In doing this, BP employs both local and foreign experts and all the analyses are being done at local laboratories.

The company is also conducting work to prevent emergency situations from occurring like the one that occurred on the BP-controlled oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Thus, according to BP's spokesman, within the framework of BP-Azerbaijan-implemented projects a serious project has been recently carried out to identify both the socio-economic situation, the state of the environment and the social medium in all the sensitive spots in Azerbaijan, in particular where pipelines are being laid.A. Souzahas noted that this work has been carried out for the purposes of preventing any possible oil leaks. The results of the company's work have been submitted to Azerbaijan's Ministry of Emergency Situations and SOCAR [State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic], so that, in the event of an emergency situation arising, there can be a collective response and the source of the leak can be rapidly sealed.

A BP company representative, Faig Askerov, had previously noted that, after the much-published major accident at the oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, the British oil giant tightened up its environmental safety requirements in all the projects that it was involved in. "In Azerbaijan we have a fairly favourable situation, since not a single serious case of damage to the environment has been registered," F. Askerov said. He noted that relevant tests and assessments of the environmental situation are periodically conducted on the oil rigs, certification is issued on the basis of ISO14001 accreditation and state-of-the-art technologies are being applied to avert the threat of harm to the environment.

Moreover A. Souza has stressed yet another aspect of the company's activity to ensure environmental safety in Azerbaijan.  He said that the flare stacks on the BP-Azerbaijan-controlled rigs were burning off 2 per cent of the total volume of associated [unwanted oil] gas extracted. "This is much lower than the standard norms and is being done for safety purposes. Sometimes it is safer to burn off a certain volume of unwanted oil gas rather than to try to use it, to release it into the atmosphere," A. Souza noted.

The chief engineer of SOCAR's Environmental Administration, Yaqub Agasiyev, has asserted that, within the framework of the "Zero Emissions" programme, the State Oil Company is also actively conducting work to make sure that the emissions into the atmosphere of unwanted oil gas are kept to a minimum. Thus, in order to reduce the volumes of low-pressureassociated gas at the oil and gas fields,including the off-shore ones, emitted into the atmosphere, the necessary compressor capacities have been created. The new capacities will ensure that the associated gas is caught and transported to dry land so it can be dispatched to the country's general gas-distribution network.

In particular, Y. Agasiyev noted, the work carried out in constructing the compressor capacities at the "Neftyanye Kamni" ["Oily Stones"] and shallow-water part of the "Guneshli" oil fields. "The issue of catching the unwanted oil gas has been resolved to a sufficient extent. It is practically impossible to reduce these figures to zero, but we are coming close to that. This is actively being worked upon." SOCAR is planning to reduce the volumes of associatedlow-pressure gas released into the atmosphere to zero in 2015. A source in the company reported that the volumes of unwanted oil gas released are on a level of 1-1.5 per cent in the country, and these are small volumes of emissions, which mainly occur at the oil fields on land.

The small volumes of emissions make the process of catching them more complicated. "Besides this, the process of catching them is sufficiently costly," the source asserts.

It has to be said that today the two major companies, BP and SOCAR, are working together sufficiently well to guarantee the safety of the environment during the extraction and transportation of hydrocarbons. Thus, the British oil giant is known to be sinking part of its investments into setting up an oil waste disposal plant in Qaradag district [Garadagh raion] of Baku, which will utilise the borehole slurry. The work on the project is going ahead, and equipment is being purchased and installed," Y. Agasiyev stated. Altogether this project is being estimated to cost 60-70m manats.

In short, the oil and gas companies have completely learned the lessons of the Gulf of Mexico and already definitely recognise that it is not only morally and physically better to avoid possible environmental catastrophes, but from a material point of view, it is much cheaper than paying fines and the costs of eliminating the consequences of the disaster.