Baku, Azerbaijan, Dec. 26
By Emil Ismayilov - Trend:
Norway's multinational oil and gas company, Statoil, will reduce its staff in Azerbaijan in the next few months due to its leaving the project on the 'Shah Deniz' gas and condensate field, a source in the oil and gas market of Azerbaijan told Trend Dec. 26.
"The staff reduction is a normal process, given the company's leaving the Shah Deniz project," the source said.
Shah Deniz's reserves are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million metric tons of condensate. A contract was signed on June 4, 1996 to develop the Shah Deniz offshore field.
The contracts participants are BP (28.8 percent), SOCAR (16.7 percent), Statoil (15.5 percent), Total (10 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NICO (10 percent) and TPAO (nine percent).
However, in 2014, the Shah Deniz shareholders list underwent changes.
In May, the French oil and gas company Total sold its stake in the project to the Turkish company TPAO (Turkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortaklıgı), and after completion of the deal the latter's share in the project will be 19 percent.
In October, it was announced that Statoil sold its share in the project. Some 15.5 percent of the Norwegian company's equity in the project was acquired by the Malaysian company Petronas. The deals on purchase and sale of the shares have not yet been completed.
The source told Trend that after a few months, Statoil's office in Baku will only have several employees responsible for the company's participation in the project of development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of oil and gas fields and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
The company acts in these projects as a minority shareholder.
The contract for the development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli large offshore field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea was signed in 1994.
The shares in the contract for development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields are distributed as follows: BP (operator in Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) - 35.78 percent, Chevron - 11.27 percent, Inpex - 10.96 percent, AzACG - 11.65 percent, Statoil - 8.56 percent, Exxon - eight percent, TPAO - 6.75 percent, Itochu - 4.3 percent and ONGC - 2.72 percent.
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