5.4. Atmospheric Air Protection

Management of air pollutant emissions is part of PJSC Gazprom’s corporate environmental protection and climate strategy.

The planned/target indicators in this area are set in line with the type of the Company’s operations based on significant environmental aspects. In 2022, PJSC Gazprom approved its 2023–2025 targets using the 2018 performance as the baseline.

Significant environmental aspects of the Company’s emissions management:

• methane emissions associated with trunkline repairs;
• methane emissions during purging of process equipment;
• nitrogen oxide emissions during compressor station operation.

To control air pollutant emissions, the Gazprom Group has in place an operational environmental monitoring (OEM) system The system helps the Group obtain data on the state of environment in the areas affected by the Company’s production facilities, analyze the environmental conditions when conducting business operations, plan environmental protection measures and monitor their implementation.

The OEM system structure enables us to control the atmospheric air quality in localities and on the borders of sanitary protection zones; noise impact; radiation background; quality of surface and ground water, bed sediments; state of geology, soil and snow cover; waste and effluents.

The Gazprom Group’s measures to reduce emissions:

• gas pumping using mobile compressor stations;
• the use of hot tapping;
• blowing gas from the sections under repairs into neighboring active pipelines;
• conducting well surveys without releasing natural gas into the air;
• the use of multi-component surfactants to better remove reservoir fluids from well bottomholes;
• APG flaring reduction (discontinuation).

Reducing the amount of APG flared is an important step on the Group’s way to reduce harmful emissions and its carbon footprint. The Company’s goal is to achieve an APG utilization rate of 95%. The Gazprom Group is consistently moving towards this figure by developing and introducing APG utilization methods at its facilities. These include APG transportation and supply to gas processing plants, the UGSS of the Russian Federation, processing, generation of heat and electricity to meet the Group’s internal needs, and injection into the gas cap to maintain reservoir pressure. In 2022, the APG utilization rate at PJSC Gazprom’s gas production subsidiaries was 98.4%.

PJSC Gazprom’s gas production subsidiaries fully implemented measures to increase the APG utilization and achieved a utilization level that meets the requirements of the Russian Government’s resolution No. 1148 dated November 8, 2012.

At the same time, the requirements of the said resolution for the maximum permissible value of the flaring and/or APG dispersion indicators do not apply to the development of subsurface sites with a depletion of 0.01 or less, as well as within three years after the date the specified indicator is exceeded.

Currently, the fields of the kind include the En-Yakhinskoye and Orenburgskoye oil and gas condensate fields.