Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.31
By Seymur Aliyev - Trend:
Changes in world oil prices will not affect the work plans of Great Britain's BP company in Azerbaijan, the company's regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey Gordon Birrell told reporters on Oct.29.
He said the work within the second stage of development of the Shah Deniz field, South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion project and other projects of the company will continue.
The oil prices in world markets continue to decline. The price for a barrel of Brent oil dropped to $85.66, while the price for WTI decreased to $80.9 per barrel on Oct.28. These are the lowest prices for world oil brands in the last four years. The oil prices have dropped by over 25 percent (from $106 per barrel) from June 2014.
The US Goldman Sachs bank has lowered the forecast for the average price for Brent oil from $100 to $85 per barrel for the Q1 of 2015, while the forecast for WTI has been reduced from $90 to $75 per barrel.
This is while the International Monetary Fund expects the average oil prices to stand at $99.5 in 2015.
Azerbaijani government has lowered the forecast for oil prices to $90 per barrel for the state budget of 2015-2018.
The reserve of the Shah Deniz field is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas. The contract for the development of the Shah Deniz field was signed on June 4, 1996.
Annual production of gas will increase from 9 billion cubic meters (the first phase) by an additional 16 billion cubic meters in the second phase within the Shah Deniz project. Two offshore platforms will be installed and more than 20 underwater wells will be drilled for additional production of 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year under the Shah Deniz-2.
On December 17, 2013, a final investment decision was made on the Stage 2 of the 'Shah Deniz' offshore gas and condensate field's development.
The gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of the field's development will be exported to Turkey and to the European markets by means of expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and construction of the Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
The first gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 and to Europe in 2019.
The shareholders are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), NICO (10 percent), Total (10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), TPAO (9 percent) and SOCAR (16.7 percent). These percentages include the recent purchases of equity from Statoil by BP and SOCAR.
Earlier, Total has entered into an agreement to sell its interest in Shah Deniz to TPAO. After the transaction is over, the share of the latter in the project will be 19 percent.
Moreover, Norway's Statoil company has sold its 15.5-percent share in the Shah Deniz project to the Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas. The transaction is expected to be closed early 2015, subject to approval from the relevant authorities.
Edited by SI