Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 4
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
Some 380 million tons of oil have been produced in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea since November 1997 at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) oil and gas fields block, including 209 million tons of Azerbaijani profitable oil.
This was announced by the first vice-president of SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan), Khoshbakht Yusifzade, on Nov. 4 at the Caspian Technical Conference in Baku.
He noted that 85 wells are pumping oil at the block .
"During the same period, the volume of associated gas produced at the ACG amounted to 114 billion cubic meters," he said. "The daily production [from these field blocks] is 87,000 tons of oil and 33 million cubic meters of gas."
Yusifzade noted that 26 million tons of oil and 10 billion cubic meters of associated gas were produced at the ACG during the first ten months of 2015. Some 17 million tons of oil account for Azerbaijani profitable oil.
"The share of profitable oil for that period was 65 percent and will increase in the future," Yusifzade said.
Out of 396 million tons of oil exported by Azerbaijan, 288 million tons of oil were delivered via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, according to Yusifzade.
"The remaining part was shipped through the Baku-Supsa, Baku-Novorossiysk pipelines and railway," Yusifzade said. "At the same time, for 10 months of this year, Azerbaijan exported 28 million tons of oil, 24 million tons was delivered on the BTC."
He went on to add that the total production at the ACG will amount to 385 million tons before late 2015, which accounts for only 17 percent of the reserves within the block. Plans call for increasing the oil recovery factor from 45 to 50 percent.
The contract for development of the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve in the block is nearly 1 billion tons.
The shareholders of the project are: BP (operator in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) - 35.78 percent, Chevron - 11.27 percent, Inpex - 10.96 percent, AzACG - 11.65 percent, Statoil - 8.56 percent, Exxon - 8 percent, TPAO - 6.75 percent, Itocu - 4.3 percent and ONGC - 2.72 percent.
Yusifzade said that 66 billion cubic meters of gas and 17 million tons of condensate have been produced at the Shah Deniz gas field since it was commissioned.
"To date, the total amount of exports of Azerbaijani gas to Turkey has been 36 billion cubic meters, and 4.8 billion cubic meters being exported to Georgia," he said.
Yusifzade went on to add that total proven oil reserves in Azerbaijan amount to about 2 billion tons, with gas at 2.6 trillion cubic meters and projected reserves reaching some 5.4 billion cubic meters of gas and 4.5 billion tons of oil.
The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
The shareholders in the contract are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Statoil (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).
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