Baku, Azerbaijan, June 23
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
State-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates (Emirates National Oil Company, ENOC) started to purchase condensate from the Shah Deniz, the largest gas field in Azerbaijan, a source in Azerbaijan’s oil and gas market told Trend June 23.
The source said that ENOC purchases condensate from the share owned by the subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) - Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO), which has a 10 percent stake in the Shah Deniz consortium.
“ENOC intends to strengthen its presence on the market of the Caspian region and started to buy monthly nearly 30,000 tons of condensate from the NICO,” the source said. “This share is transported by rail from the oil and gas terminal in Azerbaijan’s Sangachal to the Georgian port of Batumi, and then is sold on the European market.”
“NICO doesn’t transport its production share via Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline due to the presence of the US Chevron company in the BTC consortium,” the source noted.
ENOC is the owner of the Dragon Oil company, an operator of the Turkmen Cheleken oil field, most part of the products from which is transported via the BTC.
The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996. The field's reserve is estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas.
Daily production of condensate at the Shah Deniz field currently stands at 7,000 tons. In January-May 2016, some 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas and nearly one million tons of condensate were extracted at the Shah Deniz field.
The shareholders in the contract are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).