Azerbaijan, Baku /corr. Trend S.Aliyev / The self-lifting rig named after Heydar Aliyev will carry out drilling work in the Russian section of the Caspian Sea belonging to Dagestan, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) reports. The field and client have not been announced.
The rig will be installed in the area of drilling where the depth of water equals 450-500m. The rig will be towed to the drilling area by the vessels Aura, Andoga, and V. Seydov of the alliance of the CASPIAN Marine Service leased from SOCAR Caspian Marine Oil Fleet.
Russian LUKOIL Company expects the rigs named after Heydar Aliyev belonging to Danish Maersk to be free in June 2008 in order to drill the second exploration well on Azerbaijani perspective field Yalama (block D-222). The second exploration well will be nearly 2,650m in depth and will be drilled 22km away from the first exploration well.
In mid-September an engineering-geological investigation in the depth of 656-720m will be carried out on the territory intended for drilling the second well. LUKOIL drilled the first exploration well on Yalama field in 2005 in the depth of 4,400m. During the drilling, a small volume of hydrocarbons was discovered which was not commercially interesting for the company.