BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 5. Foreign companies refrained from investing in the country in the early years of Azerbaijan's independence, bp’s Vice President for the Caspian region, Communications and External Affairs Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli said, Trend reports.
Aslanbayli made the remark during panel discussions on "Heydar Aliyev's energy strategy" within the international conference on "Foreign policy priorities of national leader Heydar Aliyev", organized by the Center of Analysis of International Relations and the Public Administration Academy under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
According to bp’s vice president, great leader Heydar Aliyev was able to attract foreign oil companies to Azerbaijan and achieve the signing of the "Contract of the Century".
He noted that at that time Azerbaijan lagged behind in terms of modern oil and gas technologies, the country had no export opportunities.
"The great leader Heydar Aliyev, having resolved all these issues, ensured the entry of Azerbaijani oil to the world market," Aslanbayli said.
According to him, from the first day of the start of production to the present, about 189 billion cubic meters of gas have been produced from the Shah Deniz field, and 4.2 billion barrels of oil have been produced under the Contract of the Century. Over the past years, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan received $167 billion under the "Contract of the Century".
"Today, in many countries of the world, there are no such technologies that we use in oil and gas fields. For example, a recently commissioned platform can be controlled remotely. bp has applied this technology for the first time in Azerbaijan. Thanks to this, Azerbaijan has become one of the world's oil and gas production centers," he added.
Under the leadership of national leader Heydar Aliyev, one of the landmark agreements in Azerbaijan's 20th-century history due to its political, economic and strategic importance - the Agreement on the Joint Development and Production Sharing for the “Azeri” and “Chirag” Fields and the “Gunashli” Field in the Azerbaijani Sector of the Caspian Sea - "The Contract of the Century" was signed on September 20, 1994.
The $7.4 billion agreement involved 11 international oil companies (AMOCO, bp, McDermott, UNOCAL, SOCAR, Lukoil, Statoil, TPAO, Pennzoil, Ramco, Delta) representing seven countries (Azerbaijan, US, UK, Russia, Türkiye, Norway and Saudi Arabia) as contractor parties.
On April 4, 2023, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev attended a sail-away ceremony for the Azeri-Central-East platform topsides at the Bayil fabrication yard.
bp’s regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye Gary Jones, project general manager for the Azeri-Central-East project Neal Phillips informed the head of state of the work done on the project.
The Azeri-Central-East (ACE) sanction is the first major investment decision by the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) partnership since the extension of the ACG Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) to 2049 was agreed upon in 2017. The ACE project is a $6 billion development that includes a new offshore platform and facilities designed to process up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day. The project is expected to produce up to 300 million barrels over its lifetime.
ACE is centered on a new 48-slot production, drilling and quarters platform located mid-way between the existing Central Azeri and East Azeri platforms in a water depth of approximately 140 meters. The project also includes new infield pipelines to transfer oil and gas from the ACE platform to the existing ACG Phase 2 oil and gas export pipelines for transportation to the onshore Sangachal terminal.
In addition, there is a water injection pipeline between the East Azeri and ACE platforms to supply injection water from the Central Azeri compression and water injection platform to the ACE facilities.
The ACE topsides facilities have a design weight of 19,600 tonnes containing oil and gas processing facilities, an integrated drilling rig, a gas compressor and living quarters.
The topsides unit has been constructed by Azfen in the Bayil fabrication yard using local infrastructure and resources. Currently, the construction and commissioning work is in the final stages with 95 percent of overall onshore commissioning work already completed.
At peak, the topsides construction activities involved up to 4,400 workers and over 90 percent of them were Azerbaijani nationals.
The platform will be remotely controlled from the Sangachal terminal and includes innovative system automation.