Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 26
By Aygun Badalova -Trend:
The consortium of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) offshore fields block development in Azerbaijan will invest about two billion dollars in the project in 2014, Reuters reported BP's president for the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey region, Gordon Birrell as saying. BP is an operator in ACG development project.
"We will spend approximately two billion dollars at the ACG in 2014, which is slightly less than last year," Birrell said.
This year's money would be spent on drilling 19 wells in the ACG, according to Birrell.
A PSA contract on the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli offshore field development project was signed in September 1994. The agreement is valid for 30 years.
Shares in the contract for development of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields is 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.
In 2013 the consortium spent about 772 million dollars in operating expenditure and 2,833 million dollars in capital expenditure on ACG activities, according to BP report as of 2013.
ACG produced on average 655,370 barrels per day or over 239 million barrels during 2013 from the Chirag, Central Azeri, West Azeri, East Azeri and Deepwater Gunashli platforms compared to 664,400 barrels per day in 2012.
Birrell said output would fall slightly at the ACG oilfields this year because of planned maintenance work at the Central Azeri and West Azeri platforms, halting operations for a couple of weeks. He did not say when the work would start.
"Because we are shutting down this year, I expect it (output) to be slightly less in 2014," Birrell said. "It's included in the plan that is shared with the SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic) and the government. This is no surprise," he added.