BP plans to ramp up production at Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field, Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, BP’s vice president for Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, said.
“We expect flat oil production from Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) and a rise in gas production at Shah Deniz in 2019 as we will continue to ramp up production on Shah Deniz throughout this year and … in the next few years,” he told Reuters, Trend reports.
He said the giant ACG oilfields, which have so far produced 3.5 billion barrels of oil, had the potential to yield another 3 billion barrels.
Aslanbayli said a final investment decision regarding exploration and production on the east and central Azeri field envisaged by the extended contract would be made in the first half of this year.
Aslanbayli said the BP-led consortium planned two maintenance shutdowns of platforms at the central Azeri and west Chirag oilfields this year for a couple of weeks each.
He said the first gas from the second stage of Azerbaijan’s giant Shah Deniz field would be delivered to markets in Europe on time, in 2020.
“We are quite confident that we will be able to deliver gas from Shah Deniz II to Europe next year as it was planned,” he said.
The contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. A ceremony to sign a new contract on development of the ACG block of oil and gas fields was held in Baku Sept. 14, 2017.
The new ACG participating interests are as follows: BP – 30.37 percent; AzACG (SOCAR) – 25 percent; Chevron – 9.57 percent; INPEX – 9.31 percent; Statoil – 7.27 percent; ExxonMobil – 6.79 percent; TP – 5.73 percent; ITOCHU – 3.65 percent; ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) – 2.31 percent.
Shah Deniz participating interests are: BP (operator – 28.8 percent), TPAO (19 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), PETRONAS (15.5 percent), LUKOIL (10 percent) and NICO (10 percent).
