Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec.12
By Emil Ismayilov - Trend:
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) produced nearly three billion cubic meters of gas at the Shah Deniz gas condensate field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea in Jan.-Nov., a source at SOCAR told Trend on Dec.11.
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.
"We continue producing gas at Shah Deniz," said the source. "Over 2.9 billion cubic meters of gas was produced as of the first 11 months of 2014."
Part of the gas produced at Shah Deniz is delivered to Georgia and Turkey via the South Caucasus pipeline and to the gas compressor stations of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
About 9.8 billion cubic meters of gas and 2.48 million metric tons of condensate (19.6 million barrels) was produced at the Shah Deniz field in 2013, compared to 7.73 billion cubic meters of gas and 2 million metric tons of condensate in 2012.
The shareholders are: BP, operator (28.8 percent), Statoil (15.5 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.
A final investment decision was made on December 17, 2013 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.
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Emil Ismayilov is Trend Agency's staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @Emilsmail