Uzbek oil and gas company JV Sanoat Energetika Guruhi LLC (Saneg) has become the first company in Central Asia to register a methane emissions reduction project and is targeting further cuts by year-end, bne IntelliNews has learned. 

Saneg features centrally in Uzbekistan's plan to reduce emissions. It says it is looking to become a leader in Central Asia with its large conglomerate of businesses and ability to invest in infrastructure from a healthy balance sheet. 

The company, which accounts for 80% of Uzbekistan's oil production, said it had completed the first phase of a project using advanced leak detection and remediation (LDAR) technology in cooperation with VEMA SA (Switzerland) and ICA-Finance AS (Norway).

"This decarbonisation project contributes to a significant and irreversible reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by more than 83,000 tonnes per year," Saneg founder Bakhtiyor Fazilov said in a statement.

The project, developed under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) methodology, has already identified and repaired around 200 leaks across Saneg's operations in Karshi, Mubarek and Andijan, the company said.

Saneg said it expects to achieve total greenhouse gas reductions of approximately 410,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year by the end of 2024.

"This is a very significant event in the history of our company," Fazilov said.

"Obtaining LDAR certification confirms Saneg's commitment to meeting the highest standards of environmental responsibility and technological progress," the official said. 

Since 2021 Saneg has drilled over 100 wells. It has a specialist daughter company that focuses on modelling and prediction, studying the geology to work out how best to extract the remaining reserves. Typically a third of the wells are extracting oil, a third are extracting gas and the remaining third are exploratory wells.

Over 80% of the wells require directional drilling, whereas UNG wells are simple vertical wells with large deposits that are technically simple to operate.