SOCAR directed fire vertically on gas well

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) continues extinguishing of fire on the gas well on the Bulla-Deniz field, which started on August 17, 2013.

SOCAR Vice President Halik Mammadov told journalists that "fire has not been extinguished yet, but the works continue."

SOCAR reported that it has localized the fire on the exploration well on Bulla-Deniz field and also suspended its horizontal spreading.

According to the same statement, fire that spread after the accident on the well, has created a high temperature zone within the radius of 350 meters. As the zone did not allow approaching the platform, the

company has decided to apply "point shooting" of the well. The military vessels of the state frontier service have been used for this purpose. The taken measures allowed localizing the fire and directing it vertically.

After that the company used six fire boats to create a water curtain near the well. Owing to these measures the exploration group of SOCAR's Security Department managed to approach the well as close as within 2-3 meters and get detailed information about the state of the platform and equipment. The data has been used to specify the plan of further actions.

Despite the possibility to extinguish the fire, it was decided to let the gas burn continuously to prevent the sea pollution and safeguard security of the employees. "For this purpose full fire extinguishing was considered inadvisable," reads the statement.

Turan reported that SOCAR jointly with the Ministry of Emergency Situation have been working to extinguish the fire on the well No 90. The upper part of the well, which was damaged by the fire, has been cleaned. The well has been "shot" several times. Fire was extinguished for a short period of time, but then ignition continued, because of a strong pressure.-0-