Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 29
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
Azerbaijan's state oil company SOCAR is not yet receiving gas from Russia's Gazprom, according to Rovnag Abdullayev, the Azerbaijani company's president.
Speaking to reporters in Baku Oct. 29, Abdullayev said that currently the parties are discussing the technical details of the issue.
"Negotiations between SOCAR and Gazprom are currently underway. Now we are working out the technical details of a contract, but it is yet unknown exactly when it [the contract] will be signed," he further said.
Abdullayev went on to add that Russia's gas will be supplied with a view to inject it into Azerbaijan's underground storage facilities in order to use them at full capacity.
Earlier, a senior representative of SOCAR told Trend that almost a quarter of all the gas produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) is pumped back into the reservoir to maintain pressure.
Back in September, Abdullayev, speaking to reporters, said that gas consumption greatly increased in Azerbaijan over the past two years. He said. Speaking of gas supply, SOCAR head said as of now the level of gas supply exceeds 90 percent.
"This causes an increased demand in gas," he added. "Therefore, we redirected the volumes of gas, supplied to Russia, into the domestic market."
"The gas extracted at the Shah Deniz, is contracted for its supply to Georgia and Turkey, and therefore we don't have additional volumes for Gazprom," Abdullayev further said.
"In this regard, a gas swap with Gazprom will allow us to further ensure gas supply to southern regions of Russia, to test out our gas storage facilities, as well as, in case of a consistently high level of injection into them, to reduce the volume of extraction of associated gas at the ACG, and to pump it to the maximum extent to reservoirs to increase oil output at the block," he added.
BP, in 2014, delivered 2.76 billion cubic meters of associated gas to SOCAR compared to 2.19 billion cubic meters delivered in 2013.
The contract for development of ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve of the block nears 1 billion metric 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 - eight percent, TPAO - 6.75 percent, Itocu - 4.3 percent and ONGC - 2.72 percent.