MOP Environmental Solutions (MOPN)

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World Bank urges Azerbaijan to clean century's worth of oil spills

The World Bank urged Azerbaijan on Wednesday to clean up more than a century's worth of environmental damage caused by oil production.

The bank's representatives have been in talks with President Ilham Aliyev and other officials on a multi-million-dollar project to clean an area roughly the size of Malta, a senior bank official for the region, Peter Thomson, told journalists.

The clean-up would focus on oil-soaked areas in the Absheron peninsula, Azerbaijan's most densely populated region and location of the capital Baku, where oil has been produced since the country was part of the Russian Empire in the 19th century.

"This legacy of environmental damage extends over a century and reflects the history of oil production in Azerbaijan," Thomson said. "A clean-up of this size hasn't been undertaken anywhere."

The World Bank said it would potentially provide a loan of about 50 million dollars for "capacity building" and an initial clean-up but also expected funding from the government, which is earning large profits from the current oil boom.

Some funds could be earned through the recovery of oil in damaged areas, he said.

"In financial terms we expect parts of the clean-up to pay for themselves," Thomson said.

Azerbaijan's capital Baku is surrounded by ageing, noxious oil fields, and "nodding donkey" pumps are a common sight even inside the city.

Some of the fields are still active, but Azerbaijan now produces most of its oil in offshore facilities that have been built by Western oil companies since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Areas around the Caspian Sea shoreline and the international airport are a top priority, Thomson said, with the government "quite likely" to "deal with these very quickly."

"The situation in Azerbaijan is unusual in that it's a very high concentration of oil-related pollution in a very small area," Thomson said.

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